The Possibility of Social Choice†
By AMARTYA SEN*
“A camel,” it has been said, “is a horse de-
signed by a committee.” This might sound like
a telling example of the terrible deficiencies of
committee decisions, but it is really much too
mild an indictment. A camel may not have the
speed of a horse, but it is a very useful and
harmonious animal—well coordinated to travel
long distances without food and water. A com-
mittee that tries to reflect the diverse wishes of
its different members in designing a horse could
very easily end up with something far less
congruous: perhaps a centaur of Greek myth-
ology, half a horse and half something else—a
mercurial creation combining savagery with
confusion.
The difficulty that a small committee experi-
ences may be only greater when it comes to
decisions of a sizable society, reflecting the
choices “of the people, by the people, for the
people.” That, broadly speaking, is the subject
of “social choice,” and it includes within its
capacious frame various problems with the
common feature of relating social judgments
and group decisions to the views and interests of
the individuals who make up the society or the
group. If there is a central question that can be
seen as the motivating issue that inspires social
choice theory, it is this: how can it be possible
to arrive at cogent aggregative judgments about
the society (for example, about “social welfare,”
or “the public interest,” or “aggregate poverty”),
given the diversity of preferences, concerns, and
† choice over, alternative social possibilities (in-
This article is the lecture Amartya Sen delivered in
Stockholm, Sweden, December 8, 1998, when he received
the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
The article is copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1998 and
is published here with the permission of the Nobel Foun-
dation.
* The Master’s Lodge, Trinity College, Cambridge, CB2
1TQ, England. For helpful comments and suggestions, I am
most grateful to Sudhir Anand, Kenneth Arrow, Tony At-
kinson, Emma Rothschild, and Kotaro Suzumura. I have
also benefited from discussions with Amiya Bagchi, Pranab
Bardhan, Kaushik Basu, Angus Deaton, Rajat Deb, Jean
Drèze, Bhaskar Dutta, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, James Foster,
Siddiq Osmani, Prasanta Pattanaik, and Tony Shorrocks.
349
predicaments of the different individuals within
the society? How can we find any rational basis
for making such aggregative judgements as “the
society prefers this to that,” or “the society
should choose this over that,” or “this is socially
right”? Is reasonable social choice at all possi-
ble, especially since, as Horace noted a long
time ago, there may be “as many preferences as
there are people”?
I. Social Choice Theory
In this lecture, I shall try to discuss some
challenges and foundational problems faced by
social choice theory as a discipline.1 The imme-
diate occasion for this lecture is, of course, an
award, and I am aware that I am expected to
discuss, in one form or another, my own work
associated with this event (however immodest
that attempt might otherwise have been). This I
will try to do, but it is, I believe, also a plausible
occasion to address some general questions
about social choice as a discipline—its content,
relevance, and reach—and I intend to seize this
opportunity. The Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences referred to “welfare economics” as the
general field of my work for which the award
was given, and separated out three particular
areas: social choice, distribution, and poverty.
While I have indeed been occupied, in various
ways, with these different subjects, it is social
choice theory, pioneeringly formulated in its
modern form by Arrow (1951),2 that provides a
general approach to the evaluation of, and
cluding inter alia the assessment of social wel-
fare, inequality, and poverty). This I take to be
1
This is, obviously, not a survey of social choice theory
and there is no attempt here to scan the relevant literature.
Overviews can be found in Alan M. Feldman (1980), Pra-
santa K. Pattanaik and Maurice Salles (1983), Kotaro Su-
zumura (1983), Peter J. Hammond (1985), Jon Elster and
Aanund Hylland (1986), Sen (1986a), David Starrett (1988),
Dennis C. Mueller (1989), and more extensively in Kenneth
J. Arrow et al. (1997).
2
See also Arrow (1950, 1951, 1963).
350 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
reason enough for primarily concentrating on
social choice theory in this Nobel lecture.
Social choice theory is a very broad disci-
pline, covering a variety of distinct questions,
and it may be useful to mention a few of the
problems as illustrations of its subject matter
(on many of which I have been privileged to
work). When would majority rule yield unam-
biguous and consistent decisions? How can we
judge how well a society as a whole is doing in
the light of the disparate interests of its different
members? How do we measure aggregate pov-
erty in view of the varying predicaments and
miseries of the diverse people that make up the
society? How can we accommodate rights and
liberties of persons while giving adequate rec-
ognition to their preferences? How do we ap-
praise social valuations of public goods such as
the natural environment, or epidemiological se-
curity? Also, some investigations, while not
directly a part of social choice theory, have been
helped by the understanding generated by the
study of group decisions (such as the causation
and prevention of famines and hunger, or the
forms and consequences of gender inequality,
or the demands of individual freedom seen as a
“social commitment”). The reach and relevance
of social choice theory can be very extensive
indeed.
II. Origins of Social Choice Theory and
Constructive Pessimism
How did the subject of social choice theory
originate? The challenges of social decisions
involving divergent interests and concerns have
been explored for a long time. For example,
Aristotle in ancient Greece and Kautilya in an-
cient India, both of whom lived in the fourth
century B.C., explored various constructive pos-
sibilities in social choice in their books respec-
tively entitled Politics and Economics.3
However, social choice theory as a systematic
3
“Arthashastra,” the Sanskrit word (the title of Kauti-
lya’s book), is best translated literally as “Economics,” even
though he devoted much space to investigating the demands
of statecraft in a conflictual society. English translations of
Aristotle’s Politics and Kautilya’s Arthashastra can be
found respectively in E. Barker (1958) and L. N. Rangarajan
(1987). On the interesting medieval European writings on
these issues see, for example, Ian McLean (1990).
JUNE 1999
discipline first came into its own around the time
of the French Revolution. The subject was pio-
neered by French mathematicians in the late eigh-
teenth century, such as J. C. Borda (1781) and
Marquis de Condorcet (1785), who addressed
these problems in rather mathematical terms and
who initiated the formal discipline of social choice
in terms of voting and related procedures. The
intellectual climate of the period was much influ-
enced by European Enlightenment, with its inter-
est in reasoned construction of social order.
Indeed, some of the early social choice theorists,
most notably Condorcet, were also among the
intellectual leaders of the French Revolution.
The French Revolution, however, did not
usher in a peaceful social order in France. De-
spite its momentous achievements in changing
the political agenda across the whole world, in
France itself it not only produced much strife
and bloodshed, it also led to what is often
called, not inaccurately, a “reign of terror.” In-
deed, many of the theorists of social coordina-
tion, who had contributed to the ideas behind
the Revolution, perished in the flames of the
discord that the Revolution itself unleashed
(this included Condorcet who took his own life
when it became quite likely that others would
do it for him). Problems of social choice, which
were being addressed at the level of theory and
analysis, did not wait, in this case, for a peace-
fully intellectual resolution.
The motivation that moved the early social
choice theorists included the avoidance of both
instability and arbitrariness in arrangements for
social choice. The ambitions of their work fo-
cused on the development of a framework for
rational and democratic decisions for a group,
paying adequate attention to the preferences and
interests of all its members. However, even the
theoretical investigations typically yielded
rather pessimistic results. They noted, for ex-
ample, that majority rule can be thoroughly
inconsistent, with A defeating B by a majority,
B defeating C also by a majority, and C in turn
defeating A, by a majority as well.4
4
See Condorcet (1785). There are many commentaries
on these analyses, including Arrow (1951), Duncan Black
(1958), William V. Gehrlein (1983), H. Peyton Young
(1988), and McLean (1990). On the potential ubiquity of
inconsistency in majority voting, see Richard D. McKelvey
(1979) and Norman J. Schofield (1983).
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
A good deal of exploratory work (often,
again, with pessimistic results) continued in Eu-
rope through the nineteenth century. Indeed,
some very creative people worked in this area
and wrestled with the difficulties of social
choice, including Lewis Carroll, the author of
Alice in Wonderland (under his real name, C. L.
Dodgson, 1874, 1884).
When the subject of social choice was revived
in the twentieth century by Arrow (1951), he too
was very concerned with the difficulties of group
decisions and the inconsistencies to which they
may lead. While Arrow put the discipline of social
choice in a structured—and axiomatic—frame-
work (thereby leading to the birth of social choice
theory in its modern form), he deepened the pre-
existing gloom by establishing an astonishing—
and apparently pessimistic—result of ubiquitous
reach.
Arrow’s (1950, 1951, 1963) “impossibility
theorem” (formally, the “General Possibility
Theorem”) is a result of breathtaking elegance
and power, which showed that even some very
mild conditions of reasonableness could not be
simultaneously satisfied by any social choice
procedure, within a very wide family. Only a
dictatorship would avoid inconsistencies, but
that of course would involve: (1) in politics, an
extreme sacrifice of participatory decisions, and
(2) in welfare economics, a gross inability to be
sensitive to the heterogeneous interests of a
diverse population. Two centuries after the
flowering of the ambitions of social rationality,
in Enlightenment thinking and in the writings of
the theorists of the French Revolution, the sub-
ject seemed to be inescapably doomed. Social
appraisals, welfare economic calculations, and
evaluative statistics would have to be, it
seemed, inevitably arbitrary or unremediably
despotic.
Arrow’s “impossibility theorem” aroused im-
mediate and intense interest (and generated a
massive literature in response, including many
other impossibility results).5 It also led to the
5
By varying the axiomatic structure, related impossibil-
ity results can also be obtained. Examples can be found in
Arrow (1950, 1951, 1952, 1963), Julian H. Blau (1957,
1972, 1979), Bengt Hansson (1969a, b, 1976), Tapas Ma-
jumdar (1969, 1973), Sen (1969, 1970a, 1986b, 1993a,
1995a), Pattanaik (1971, 1973, 1978), Andreu Mas-Collel
and Hugo Sonnenschein (1972), Thomas Schwartz (1972,
351
diagnosis of a deep vulnerability in the subject
that overshadowed Arrow’s immensely impor-
tant constructive program of developing a sys-
tematic social choice theory that could actually
work.
III. Welfare Economics and Obituary Notices
Social choice difficulties apply to welfare
economics with a vengeance. By the middle
1960’s, William Baumol (1965) judiciously re-
marked that “statements about the significance
of welfare economics” had started having “an
ill-concealed resemblance to obituary notices”
(p. 2). This was certainly the right reading of the
prevailing views. But, as Baumol himself noted,
we have to assess how sound these views were.
We have, especially, to ask whether the pessi-
mism associated with Arrovian structures in
social choice theory must be seen to be devas-
tating for welfare economics as a discipline.
As it happens, traditional welfare economics,
which had been developed by utilitarian econ-
omists (such as Francis T. Edgeworth, 1881;
Alfred Marshall, 1890; Arthur C. Pigou, 1920),
had taken a very different track from the vote-
oriented social choice theory. It took inspiration
not from Borda (1781) or Condorcet (1785), but
from their contemporary, Jeremy Bentham
(1789). Bentham had pioneered the use of util-
itarian calculus to obtain judgments about the
social interest by aggregating the personal in-
terests of the different individuals in the form of
their respective utilities.
Bentham’s concern—and that of utilitarian-
ism in general—was with the total utility of a
community. This was irrespective of the distri-
bution of that total, and in this there is an
1986), Peter C. Fishburn (1973, 1974), Allan F. Gibbard
(1973), Donald J. Brown (1974, 1975), Ken Binmore (1975,
1994), Salles (1975), Mark A. Satterthwaite (1975), Robert
Wilson (1975), Rajat Deb (1976, 1977), Suzumura (1976a,
b, 1983), Blau and Deb (1977), Jerry S. Kelly (1978, 1987),
Douglas H. Blair and Robert A. Pollak (1979, 1982), Jean-
Jacques Laffont (1979), Bhaskar Dutta (1980), Graciela
Chichilnisky (1982a, b), David M. Grether and Charles R.
Plott (1982), Chichilnisky and Geoffrey Heal (1983), Hervé
Moulin (1983), Pattanaik and Salles (1983), David Kelsey
(1984a, b), Bezalel Peleg (1984), Hammond (1985, 1997),
Mark A. Aizerman and Fuad T. Aleskerov (1986), Schofield
(1996), and Aleskerov (1997), among many other contribu-
tions.
352 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
informational limitation of considerable ethical
and political importance. For example, a person
who is unlucky enough to have a uniformly
lower capability to generate enjoyment and util-
ity out of income (say, because of a handicap)
would also be given, in the utilitarian ideal
world, a lower share of a given total. This is a
consequence of the single-minded pursuit of
maximizing the sum-total of utilities (on the
peculiar consequences of this unifocal priority,
see Sen, 1970a, 1973a; John Rawls, 1971;
Claude d’Aspremont and Louis Gevers, 1977).
However, the utilitarian interest in taking com-
parative note of the gains and losses of different
people is not in itself a negligible concern. And
this concern makes utilitarian welfare econom-
ics deeply interested in using a class of infor-
mation—in the form of comparison of utility
gains and losses of different persons—with
which Condorcet and Borda had not been di-
rectly involved.
Utilitarianism has been very influential in
shaping welfare economics, which was domi-
nated for a long time by an almost unquestion-
ing adherence to utilitarian calculus. But by the
1930’s utilitarian welfare economics came un-
der severe fire. It would have been quite natural
to question (as Rawls [1971] would masterfully
do in formulating his theory of justice) the util-
itarian neglect of distributional issues and its
concentration only on utility sum-totals in a
distribution-blind way. But that was not the
direction in which the antiutilitarian critiques
went in the 1930’s and in the decades that
followed. Rather, economists came to be per-
suaded by arguments presented by Lionel Rob-
bins and others (deeply influenced by “logical
positivist” philosophy) that interpersonal com-
parisons of utility had no scientific basis: “Ev-
ery mind is inscrutable to every other mind and
no common denominator of feelings is pos-
sible” (Robbins, 1938 p. 636). Thus, the
epistemic foundations of utilitarian welfare
economics were seen as incurably defective.
There followed attempts to do welfare eco-
nomics on the basis of the different persons’
respective orderings of social states, without
any interpersonal comparisons of utility gains
and losses (nor, of course, any comparison of
the total utilities of different persons, which are
neglected by utilitarians as well). While utilitar-
ianism and utilitarian welfare economics are
JUNE 1999
quite indifferent to the distribution of utilities
between different persons (concentrating, as
they do, only on the sum-total of utilities), the
new regime without any interpersonal compar-
isons in any form, further reduced the informa-
tional base on which social choice could draw.
The already-limited informational base of
Benthamite calculus was made to shrink even
further to that of Borda and Condorcet, since the
use of different persons’ utility rankings with-
out any interpersonal comparison is analytically
quite similar to the use of voting information in
making social choice.
Faced with this informational restriction, util-
itarian welfare economics gave way, from the
1940’s onwards, to a so-called “new welfare
economics,” which used only one basic crite-
rion of social improvement, viz, the “Pareto
comparison.” This criterion only asserts that an
alternative situation would be definitely better if
the change would increase the utility of every-
one.6 A good deal of subsequent welfare eco-
nomics restricts attention to “Pareto efficiency”
only (that is, only to making sure that no further
Pareto improvements are possible). This crite-
rion takes no interest whatever in distributional
issues, which cannot be addressed without con-
sidering conflicts of interest and of preferences.
Some further criterion is clearly needed for
making social welfare judgments with a greater
reach, and this was insightfully explored by
Abram Bergson (1938) and Paul A. Samuelson
(1947). This demand led directly to Arrow’s
(1950, 1951) pioneering formulation of social
choice theory, relating social preference (or deci-
sions) to the set of individual preferences, and this
relation is called a “social welfare function.” Ar-
row (1951, 1963) went on to consider a set of very
mild-looking conditions, including: (1) Pareto ef-
ficiency, (2) nondictatorship, (3) independence
(demanding that social choice over any set of
alternatives must depend on preferences only over
those alternatives), and (4) unrestricted domain
(requiring that social preference must be a com-
plete ordering, with full transitivity, and that this
must work for every conceivable set of individual
preferences).
Arrow’s impossibility theorem demonstrated
6
Or, at least, if it enhanced the utility of at least one
person and did not harm the interest of anyone.
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
that it is impossible to satisfy these conditions
simultaneously.7 In order to avoid this impossi-
bility result, different ways of modifying Ar-
row’s requirements were tried out in the
literature that followed, but other difficulties
continued to emerge.8 The force and wide-
spread presence of impossibility results gener-
ated a consolidated sense of pessimism, and this
became a dominant theme in welfare economics
and social choice theory in general. Is this read-
ing justified?
IV. Complementarity of Formal Methods and
Informal Reasoning
Before I proceed further on substantive mat-
ters, it may be useful to comment briefly on the
nature of the reasoning used in answering this
and related questions. Social choice theory is a
subject in which formal and mathematical tech-
niques have been very extensively used. Those
who are suspicious of formal (and in particular,
of mathematical) modes of reasoning are often
skeptical of the usefulness of discussing real-
world problems in this way. Their suspicion is
understandable, but it is ultimately misplaced.
The exercise of trying to get an integrated pic-
ture from diverse preferences or interests of
different people does involve many complex
problems in which one could be seriously mis-
led in the absence of formal scrutiny. Indeed,
Arrow’s (1950, 1951, 1963) impossibility theo-
rem—in many ways the “locus classicus” in this
7 V. Proximity of Possibility and Impossibility
There is also the structural assumption that there are at
least two distinct individuals (but not infinitely many) and at
least three distinct social states (not perhaps the most unre-
alistic of assumptions that economists have ever made). The
axioms referred to here are those in the later version of
Arrow’s theorem: Arrow (1963). Since the presentation here
is informal and permits some technical ambiguities, those
concerned with exactness are referred to the formal state-
ments in Arrow (1963), or in Sen (1970a) or Fishburn
(1973) or Kelly (1978). Regarding proof, there are various
versions, including, of course, Arrow (1963). In Sen
(1995a) a very short—and elementary—proof is given. See
also Sen (1970a, 1979b), Blau (1972), Robert Wilson
(1975), Kelly (1978), Salvador Barberá (1980, 1983), Bin-
more (1994), and John Geanakopolous (1996), among other
variants.
8
For critical accounts of the literature, see Kelly (1978),
Feldman (1980), Pattanaik and Salles (1983), Suzumura
(1983), Hammond (1985), Walter P. Heller et al. (1986),
Sen (1986a, b), Mueller (1989), and Arrow et al. (1997).
353
field— can hardly be anticipated on the basis of
common sense or informal reasoning. This ap-
plies also to extensions of this result, for exam-
ple to the demonstration that an exactly similar
impossibility to Arrow’s holds even without
any imposed demand of internal consistency of
social choice (see Sen, 1993a Theorem 3). In
the process of discussing some substantive is-
sues in social choice theory, I shall have the
opportunity to consider various results which
too are not easily anticipated without formal
reasoning. Informal insights, important as they
are, cannot replace the formal investigations
that are needed to examine the congruity and
cogency of combinations of values and of ap-
parently plausible demands.
This is not to deny that the task of widespread
public communication is crucial for the use of
social choice theory. It is centrally important for
social choice theory to relate formal analysis to
informal and transparent examination. I have to
confess that in my own case, this combination
has, in fact, been something of an obsession,
and some of the formal ideas I have been most
concerned with (such as an adequate framework
for informational broadening, the use of partial
comparability and of partial orderings, and the
weakening of consistency conditions demanded
of binary relations and of choice functions) call
simultaneously for formal investigation and for
informal explication and accessible scrutiny.9
Our deeply felt, real-world concerns have to be
substantively integrated with the analytical use
of formal and mathematical reasoning.
The general relationship between possibility
and impossibility results also deserves some
attention, in order to understand the nature and
role of impossibility theorems. When a set of
axioms regarding social choice can all be simul-
taneously satisfied, there may be several possi-
ble procedures that work, among which we have
to choose. In order to choose between the dif-
ferent possibilities through the use of discrimi-
9
In fact, in my main monograph in social choice
theory—Collective Choice and Social Welfare (Sen,
1970a), chapters with formal analysis (the “starred” chap-
ters) alternate with chapters confined to informal discussion
(the “unstarred” chapters).
354 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
nating axioms, we have to introduce further
axioms, until only one possible procedure re-
mains. This is something of an exercise in
brinkmanship. We have to go on cutting down
alternative possibilities, moving—implicitly—
towards an impossibility, but then stop just be-
fore all possibilities are eliminated, to wit, when
one and only one option remains.
Thus, it should be clear that a full axiomatic
determination of a particular method of making
social choice must inescapably lie next door to
an impossibility—indeed just short of it. If it
lies far from an impossibility (with various pos-
itive possibilities), then it cannot give us an
axiomatic derivation of any specific method of
social choice. It is, therefore, to be expected that
constructive paths in social choice theory, de-
rived from axiomatic reasoning, would tend to
be paved on one side by impossibility results
(opposite to the side of multiple possibilities).
No conclusion about the fragility of social
choice theory (or its subject matter) emerges
from this proximity.
In fact, the literature that has followed Ar-
row’s work has shown classes of impossibility
theorems and of positive possibility results, all
of which lie quite close to each other.10 The real
issue is not, therefore, the ubiquity of impossi-
bility (it will always lie close to the axiomatic
derivation of any specific social choice rule),
but the reach and reasonableness of the axioms
to be used. We have to get on with the basic task
of obtaining workable rules that satisfy reason-
able requirements.
10
See Hansson (1968, 1969a, 1969b, 1976), Sen (1969,
1970a, 1977a, 1993a), Schwartz (1970, 1972, 1986), Pat-
tanaik (1971, 1973), Alan P. Kirman and Dieter Sonder-
mann (1972), Mas-Colell and Sonnenschein (1972), Wilson
(1972, 1975), Fishburn (1973, 1974), Plott (1973, 1976),
Brown (1974, 1975), John A. Ferejohn and Grether (1974),
Binmore (1975, 1994), Salles (1975), Blair et al. (1976),
Georges A. Bordes (1976, 1979), Donald E. Campbell
(1976), Deb (1976, 1977), Parks (1976a, b), Suzumura
(1976a, b, 1983), Blau and Deb (1977), Kelly (1978), Peleg
(1978, 1984), Blair and Pollak (1979, 1982), Blau (1979),
Bernard Monjardet (1979, 1983), Barberá (1980, 1983),
Chichilnisky (1982a, b), Chichilnisky and Heal (1983),
Moulin (1983), Kelsey (1984, 1985), Vincenzo Denicolò
(1985), Yasumi Matsumoto (1985), Aizerman and Ales-
kerov (1986), Taradas Bandyopadhyay (1986), Isaac Levi
(1986), and Campbell and Kelly (1997), among many other
contributions.
JUNE 1999
VI. Majority Decisions and Coherence
In the discussion so far, I have made no
attempt to confine attention to particular config-
urations of individual preferences, ignoring oth-
ers. Formally, this is required by Arrow’s
condition of “unrestricted domain,” which in-
sists that the social choice procedure must work
for every conceivable cluster of individual pref-
erences. It must, however, be obvious that, for
any decision procedure, some preference pro-
files will yield inconsistencies and incoherence
of social decisions while other profiles will not
produce these results.
Arrow (1951) himself had initiated, along
with Black (1948, 1958), the search for ade-
quate restrictions that would guarantee consis-
tent majority decisions. The necessary and
sufficient conditions for consistent majority de-
cisions can indeed be identified (see Sen and
Pattanaik, 1969).11 While much less restrictive
than the earlier conditions that had been identi-
fied, they are still quite demanding; indeed it is
shown that they would be easily violated in
many actual situations.
The formal results on necessary or sufficiency
conditions of majority decisions can only give as
much hope—or generate as much disappoint-
ment—about voting-based social choice as the
extent of social cohesion and confrontation (in the
actual patterns of individual preferences) would
allow. Choice problems for the society come in
many shapes and sizes, and there may be less
comfort in these results for some types of social
choice problems than for others. When distribu-
tional issues dominate and when people seek to
11
See also Ken-ichi Inada (1969, 1970), who has been a
major contributor to this literature. See also William S.
Vickrey (1960), Benjamin Ward (1965), Sen (1966, 1969),
Sen and Pattanaik (1969), and Pattanaik (1971). Other types
of restrictions have also been considered to yield consistent
majority decisions; see Michael B. Nicholson (1965), Plott
(1967), Gordon Tullock (1967), Inada (1970), Pattanaik
(1971), Otto A. Davis et al. (1972), Fishburn (1973), Kelly
(1974a, b, 1978), Pattanaik and Sengupta (1974), Eric S.
Maskin (1976a, b, 1995), Jean-Michel Grandmont (1978),
Peleg (1978, 1984), Wulf Gaertner (1979), Dutta (1980),
Chichilnisky and Heal (1983), and Suzumura (1983),
among other contributions. Domain restrictions for a wider
class of voting rules have been investigated by Pattanaik
(1970), Maskin (1976a, b, 1995), and Ehud Kalai and E.
Muller (1977). The vast literature has been definitively
surveyed by Gaertner (1998).
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
maximize their own “shares” without concern for
others (as, for example, in a “cake division” prob-
lem, with each preferring any division that in-
creases her own share, no matter what happens to
the others), then majority rule will tend to be
thoroughly inconsistent. But when there is a mat-
ter of national outrage (for example, in response to
the inability of a democratic government to pre-
vent a famine), the electorate may be reasonably
univocal and thoroughly consistent.12 Also, when
people cluster in parties, with complex agendas
and dialogues, involving give and take as well as
some general attitudes to values like equity or
justice, the ubiquitous inconsistencies can yield
ground to more congruous decisions.13
So far as welfare economics is concerned,
majority rule and voting procedures are partic-
ularly prone to inconsistency, given the central-
ity of distributional issues in welfare-economic
problems. However, one of the basic questions
to ask is whether voting rules (to which social
choice procedures are effectively restricted in
the Arrovian framework) provide a reasonable
approach to social choice in the field of welfare
economics. Are we in the right territory in try-
ing to make social welfare judgments through
variants of voting systems?
VII. Informational Broadening and
Welfare Economics
Voting-based procedures are entirely natural
for some kinds of social choice problems, such as
12
This is one reason why no famine has ever occurred in
an independent and democratic country (not run by alien-
ated rulers, or by a dictator, or by a one-party state). See Sen
(1984), Drèze and Sen (1989), Frances D’Souza (1990),
Human Rights Watch (1992), and Red Cross and Red Cres-
cent Societies (1994).
13
On different aspects of this general political issue, see
Arrow (1951), James M. Buchanan (1954a, b), Buchanan
and Tullock (1962), Sen (1970a, 1973c, 1974, 1977d,
1984), Suzumura (1983), Hammond (1985), Pattanaik and
Salles (1985), Andrew Caplin and Barry Nalebuff (1988,
1991), Young (1988), and Guinier (1991), among other
writings, and also the “Symposium” on voting procedures in
the Journal of Economic Perspectives (Winter 1995), with
contributions by Jonathan Levin and Nalebuff (1995),
Douglas W. Rae (1995), Nicolaus Tideman (1995), Robert
J. Weber (1995), Michel Le Breton and John Weymark
(1996), and Suzumura (1999), among others.
355
elections, referendums, or committee decisions.14
They are, however, altogether unsuitable for many
other problems of social choice.15 When, for ex-
ample, we want to get some kind of an aggrega-
tive index of social welfare, we cannot rely on
such procedures for at least two distinct reasons.
First, voting requires active participation, and if
someone decides not to exercise her voting right,
her preference would find no direct representation
in social decisions. (Indeed, because of lower par-
ticipation, the interests of substantial groups—for
example of African Americans in the United
States—find inadequate representation in national
politics.) In contrast, in making reasonable social
welfare judgments, the interests of the less asser-
tive cannot be simply ignored.
Second, even with the active involvement of
every one in voting exercises, we cannot but be
short of important information needed for wel-
fare-economic evaluation (on this see Sen,
1970a, 1973a). Through voting, each person can
rank different alternatives. But there is no direct
way of getting interpersonal comparisons of
different persons’ well-being from voting data.
We must go beyond the class of voting rules
(explored by Borda and Condorcet as well as
Arrow) to be able to address distributional
issues.
Arrow had ruled out the use of interpersonal
comparisons since he had followed the general
consensus that had emerged in the 1940’s that
(as Arrow put it) “interpersonal comparison of
14
There are, however, some serious problems arising
from a possible lack of correspondence between votes and
actual preferences, which could differ because of strategic
voting aimed at manipulation of voting results. On this see
the remarkable impossibility theorem of Gibbard (1973) and
Satterthwaite (1975). There is an extensive literature on
manipulation and on the challenges of implementation, on
which see also Pattanaik (1973, 1978), Steven J. Brams
(1975), Ted Groves and John Ledyard (1977), Barberá and
Sonnenschein (1978), Dutta and Pattanaik (1978), Peleg
(1978, 1984), Schmeidler and Sonnenschein (1978), Das-
gupta et al. (1979), Green and Laffont (1979), Laffont
(1979), Dutta (1980, 1997), Pattanaik and Sengupta (1980),
Sengupta (1980a, b), Laffont and Maskin (1982), Moulin
(1983, 1995), and Leo Hurwicz et al. (1985), among other
contributions. There is also a nonstrategic impossibility in
establishing an exact one-to-one correspondence between:
(1) preferring, (2) dispreferring, and (3) being indifferent,
on the one hand, and (1*) voting for, (2*) voting against,
and (3*) abstaining, on the other hand, no matter whether
voting is costly, or enjoyable, or neither (see Sen, 1964).
15
On this, see Sen (1970a, 1977a).
356 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
utilities has no meaning” (Arrow, 1951 p. 9).
The totality of the axiom combination used by
Arrow had the effect of confining social choice
procedures to rules that are, broadly speaking,
of the voting type.16 His impossibility result
relates, therefore, to this class of rules.
To lay the foundations of a constructive so-
cial choice theory, if we want to reject the
historical consensus against the use of interper-
sonal comparisons in social choice, we have to
address two important—and difficult— ques-
tions. First, can we systematically incorporate
and use something as complex as interpersonal
comparisons involving many persons? Will this
be a territory of disciplined analysis, rather than
a riot of confusing (and possibly confused)
ideas? Second, how can the analytical results be
integrated with practical use? On what kind of
information can we sensibly base interpersonal
comparisons? Will the relevant information be
actually available, to be used?
The first is primarily a question of analytical
system building, and the second that of episte-
mology as well as practical reason. The latter
issue requires a reexamination of the informa-
tional basis of interpersonal comparisons, and I
would presently argue that it calls for an ines-
capably qualified response. But the first ques-
tion can be addressed more definitively through
16
It should be explained that restricting social choice
procedures to voting rules is not an assumption that is
invoked by Arrow (1951, 1963); it is a part of the impos-
sibility theorem established by him. It is an analytical con-
sequence of the set of apparently reasonable axioms
postulated for reasoned social choice. Interpersonal compar-
ison of utilities is, of course, explicitly excluded, but the
proof of Arrow’s theorem shows that a set of other assump-
tions with considerable plausibility, taken together, logi-
cally entail other features of voting rules as well (a
remarkable analytical result on its own). The derived fea-
tures include, in particular, the demanding requirement that
no effective note be taken of the nature of the social states:
only of the votes that are respectively cast in favor of—and
against—them (a property that is often called “neutrali-
ty”—a somewhat flattering name for what is after all only
an informational restriction). While the eschewal of inter-
personal comparisons of utilities eliminates the possibility
of taking note of inequality of utilities (and of differences in
gains and losses of utilities), the entailed component of
“neutrality” prevents attention being indirectly paid to dis-
tributional issues through taking explicit note of the nature
of the respective social states (for example, of the income
inequalities in the different states). The role of induced
informational constraints in generating impossibility results
is discussed in Sen (1977c, 1979b).
JUNE 1999
constructive analysis. Without going into tech-
nicalities of the literature that has emerged, I
would like to report that interpersonal compar-
isons of various types can be fully axiomatized
and exactly incorporated in social choice pro-
cedures (through the use of “invariance condi-
tions” in a generalized framework, formally
constructed as “social welfare functionals,” on
which see Sen, 1970a, 1977c).17 Indeed, inter-
personal comparisons need not even be con-
fined to “all-or-none” dichotomies. We may be
able to make interpersonal comparisons to some
extent, but not in every comparison, nor of
every type, nor with tremendous exactness (see
Sen, 1970a, c).
We may, for example, have no great diffi-
culty in accepting that Emperor Nero’s utility
gain from the burning of Rome was smaller than
the sum-total of the utility loss of all the other
Romans who suffered from the fire. But this
does not require us to feel confident that we can
put everyone’s utilities in an exact one-to-one
correspondence with each other. There may,
thus, be room for demanding “partial compara-
bility”— denying both the extremes: full com-
parability and no comparability at all. The
different extents of partial comparability can be
given mathematically exact forms (precisely ar-
ticulating the exact extent of inexactness).18 It
can also be shown that there may be no general
need for terribly refined interpersonal compari-
sons for arriving at definite social decisions.
Quite often, rather limited levels of partial com-
parability will be adequate for making social
decisions.19 Thus the empirical exercise need
not be as ambitious as it is sometimes feared.
Before proceeding to the informational basis
of interpersonal comparisons, let me ask a big
17
See also Patrick Suppes (1966), Hammond (1976,
1977, 1985), Stephen Strasnick (1976), Arrow (1977),
d’Aspremont and Gevers (1977), Maskin (1978, 1979),
Gevers (1979), Kevin W. S. Roberts (1980a, b), Suzumura
(1983, 1997), Charles Blackorby et al. (1984), d’Aspremont
(1985), and d’Aspremont and Philippe Mongin (1998),
among other contributions.
18
See Sen (1970a, c), Blackorby (1975), Ben J. Fine
(1975a), Kaushik Basu (1980), T. Bezembinder and P. van
Acker (1980), and Levi (1986). The study of inexactness
can also be extended to “fuzzy” characterizations.
19
See also Anthony B. Atkinson (1970), Sen (1970a, c,
1973a), Dasgupta et al. (1973), and Michael Rothschild and
Joseph E. Stiglitz (1973).
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
analytical question: how much of a change in
the possibility of social choice is brought about
by systematic use of interpersonal compari-
sons? Does Arrow’s impossibility, and related
results, go away with the use of interpersonal
comparisons in social welfare judgments? The
answer briefly is, yes. The additional informa-
tional availability allows sufficient discrimina-
tion to escape impossibilities of this type.
There is an interesting contrast here. It can be
shown that admitting cardinality of utilities
without interpersonal comparisons does not
change Arrow’s impossibility theorem at all,
which can be readily extended to cardinal mea-
surability of utilities (see Theorem 8*2 in Sen,
1970a). In contrast even ordinal interpersonal
comparisons is adequate to break the exact im-
possibility. We knew of course that with some
types of interpersonal comparisons demanded
in a full form (including cardinal interpersonal
comparability), we can use the classical utilitar-
ian approach.20 But it turns out that even weaker
forms of comparability would still permit mak-
ing consistent social welfare judgments, satis-
fying all of Arrow’s requirements, in addition to
being sensitive to distributional concerns (even
though the possible rules will be confined to a
relatively small class).21
The distributional issue is, in fact, intimately
connected with the need to go beyond voting
rules as the basis of social welfare judgments.
As was discussed earlier, utilitarianism too is in
an important sense distribution indifferent: its
program is to maximize the sum-total of utili-
ties, no matter how unequally that total may be
distributed (the extensive implications of this
distributional indifference are discussed in Sen,
1973a). But the use of interpersonal compari-
sons can take other forms as well, allowing
public decisions to be sensitive to inequalities
in well-being and opportunities.
The broad approach of social welfare func-
20
On this, see particularly John C. Harsanyi’s (1955)
classic paper, which stood against the pessimistic literature
that followed Arrow’s (1951) impossibility theorem. See
also James A. Mirrlees (1982).
21
See Sen (1970a, 1977c), Rawls (1971), Edmund S.
Phelps (1973), Hammond (1976), Strasnick (1976), Arrow
(1977), d’Aspremont and Gevers (1977), Gevers (1979),
Roberts (1980a, b), Suzumura (1983, 1997), Blackorby
et al. (1984), and d’Aspremont (1985), among other contri-
butions.
357
tionals opens up the possibility of using many
different types of social welfare rules, which
differ in the treatment of equity as well as
efficiency, and also in their informational re-
quirements.22 Further, with the removal of the
artificial barrier that had prohibited interper-
sonal comparisons, many other fields of norma-
tive measurement have also been investigated
with the axiomatic approach of social welfare
analysis. My own efforts in such fields as the
evaluation and measurement of inequality (Sen,
1973a, 1992a, 1997b), poverty (Sen, 1976b,
1983b, 1985a, 1992a), distribution-adjusted
national income (Sen, 1973b, 1976a, 1979a),
and environmental evaluation (Sen, 1995a),
have drawn solidly on the broadened infor-
mational framework of recent social choice
theory.23
VIII. Informational Basis of Interpersonal
Comparisons
While the analytical issues in incorporating
interpersonal comparisons have been, on the
whole, well sorted out, there still remains the
important practical matter of finding an ade-
quate approach to the empirical discipline of
making interpersonal comparisons and then us-
ing them in practice. The foremost question to
be addressed is this: interpersonal comparison
of what?
The formal structures of social welfare func-
tions are not, in any sense, specific to utility
comparisons only, and they can incorporate
other types of interpersonal comparisons as
well. The principal issue is the choice of some
22
On this and related issues, see Sen (1970a, 1977c),
Hammond (1976), d’Aspremont and Gevers (1977), Robert
Deschamps and Gevers (1978), Maskin (1978, 1979),
Gevers (1979), Roberts (1980a), Siddiqur R. Osmani
(1982), Blackorby et al. (1984), d’Aspremont (1985), T.
Coulhon and Mongin (1989), Nick Baigent (1994), and
d’Aspremont and Mongin (1998), among many other con-
tributions. See also Harsanyi (1955) and Suppes (1966) for
pioneering analyses of the uses of interpersonal compari-
sons. Elster and John Roemer (1991) have provided fine
critical accounts of the vast literature on this subject.
23
My work on inequality (beginning with Sen, 1973a)
has been particularly influenced by the pioneering contribu-
tions of Atkinson (1970, 1983, 1989). The literature on this
subject has grown very fast in recent years; for a critical
scrutiny as well as references to the contemporary literature,
see James Foster and Sen (1997).
358 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
accounting of individual advantage, which need
not take the form of comparisons of mental
states of happiness, and could instead focus on
some other way of looking at individual well-
being or freedom or substantive opportunities
(seen in the perspective of a corresponding eval-
uative discipline).
The rejection of interpersonal comparisons of
utilities in welfare economic and in social
choice theory that followed positivist criticism
(such as that of Robbins, 1938) was firmly
based on interpreting them entirely as compar-
isons of mental states. As it happens, even with
such mental state comparisons, the case for un-
qualified rejection is hard to sustain.24 Indeed,
as has been forcefully argued by the philosopher
Donald Davidson (1986), it is difficult to see
how people can understand anything much
about other people’s minds and feelings, with-
out making some comparisons with their own
minds and feelings. Such comparisons may not
be extremely precise, but then again, we know
from analytical investigations that very precise
interpersonal comparisons may not be needed to
make systematic use of interpersonal compari-
sons in social choice (on this and related issues,
see Sen, 1970a, c, 1997b; Blackorby, 1975).
So the picture is not so pessimistic even in the
old home ground of mental state comparisons.
But, more importantly, interpersonal compari-
sons of personal welfare, or of individual ad-
vantage, need not be based only on comparisons
of mental states. In fact, there may be good
ethical grounds for not concentrating too much
24
If interpersonal comparisons are taken to be entirely a
matter of opinions or of value judgments, then the question
can also be raised as to how the divergent opinions or
valuations of different persons may be combined together
(this looks like a social choice exercise on its own). Roberts
(1995) has extensively investigated this particular formula-
tion, taking interpersonal comparison to be an exercise of
aggregation of opinions. If, however, interpersonal compar-
isons are taken to have a firmer factual basis (e.g., some
people being objectively more miserable than others), then
the use of interpersonal comparisons will call for a different
set of axiomatic demands—more appropriate for epistemol-
ogy than for ethics. For contrasting perspectives on inter-
personal comparisons of well-being, see Ian Little (1957),
Sen (1970a, 1985b), Tibor Scitovsky (1976), Donald Da-
vidson (1986), and Gibbard (1986); see also empirical stud-
ies of observed misery (for example, Drèze and Sen, 1989,
1990, 1995, 1997; Erik Schokkaert and Luc Van Ootegem,
1990; Robert M. Solow, 1995).
JUNE 1999
on mental-state comparisons—whether of plea-
sures or of desires. Utilities may sometimes be
very malleable in response to persistent depri-
vation. A hopeless destitute with much poverty,
or a downtrodden laborer living under exploit-
ative economic arrangements, or a subjugated
housewife in a society with entrenched gender
inequality, or a tyrannized citizen under brutal
authoritarianism, may come to terms with her
deprivation. She may take whatever pleasure
she can from small achievements, and adjust her
desires to take note of feasibility (thereby help-
ing the fulfilment of her adjusted desires). But
her success in such adjustment would not make
her deprivation go away. The metric of pleasure
or desire may sometimes be quite inadequate in
reflecting the extent of a person’s substantive
deprivation.25
There may indeed be a case for taking in-
comes, or commodity bundles, or resources
more generally, to be of direct interest in judg-
ing a person’s advantage, and this may be so for
various reasons—not merely for the mental
states they may help to generate.26 In fact, the
Difference Principle in Rawls’s (1971) theory
of “justice as fairness” is based on judging
individual advantage in terms of a person’s
command over what Rawls calls “primary
goods,” which are general-purpose resources
that are useful for anyone to have no matter
what her exact objectives are.
This procedure can be improved upon by
taking note not only of the ownership of pri-
mary goods and resources, but also of interper-
sonal differences in converting them into the
capability to live well. Indeed, I have tried to
argue in favor of judging individual advantage
in terms of the respective capabilities, which the
25
This issue and its far-reaching ethical and economic
implications are discussed in Sen (1980, 1985a, b). See also
Basu et al. (1995).
26
The welfare relevance of real income comparisons can
be dissociated from their mental-state correlates; see Sen
(1979a). See also the related literature on “fairness,” seen in
terms of nonenvy; for example, Duncan Foley (1967),
Serge-Christophe Kolm (1969), Elisha A. Pazner and David
Schmeidler (1974), Hal R. Varian (1974, 1975), Lars-Gun-
nar Svensson (1977, 1980), Ronald Dworkin (1981), Suzu-
mura (1983), Young (1985), Campbell (1992), and Moulin
and William Thomson (1997). Direct social judgments on
interpersonal distributions over commodities have been an-
alyzed by Franklin M. Fisher (1956).
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
person has, to live the way he or she has reason
to value.27 This approach focuses on the sub-
stantive freedoms that people have, rather than
only on the particular outcomes with which they
end up. For responsible adults, the concentra-
tion on freedom rather than only achievement
has some merit, and it can provide a general
framework for analyzing individual advantage
and deprivation in a contemporary society. The
extent of interpersonal comparisons may only
be partial— often based on the intersection of
different points of view.28 But the use of such
partial comparability can make a major differ-
ence to the informational basis of reasoned so-
cial judgments.
However, given the nature of the subject and
the practical difficulties of informational avail-
ability and evaluation, it would be overambi-
tious to be severely exclusive in sticking only to
one informational approach, rejecting all others.
In the recent literature in applied welfare eco-
nomics, various ways of making sensible inter-
personal comparisons of well-being have
emerged. Some have been based on studying
expenditure patterns, and using this to surmise
about comparative well-being of different per-
sons (see Pollak and Terence J. Wales, 1979;
Dale W. Jorgenson et al., 1980; Jorgenson,
1990; Daniel T. Slesnick, 1998), while others
have combined this with other informational
inputs (see Angus S. Deaton and John Muell-
bauer, 1980; Atkinson and Francois Bour-
guignon, 1982, 1987; Fisher, 1987, 1990;
27
See Sen (1980, 1985a, b, 1992a), Drèze and Sen
(1989, 1995), and Martha Nussbaum and Sen (1993). See
also Roemer (1982, 1996), Basu (1987), Nussbaum (1988),
Richard J. Arneson (1989), Atkinson (1989, 1995), G. A.
Cohen (1989, 1990), F. Bourguignon and G. Fields (1990),
Keith Griffin and John Knight (1990), David Crocker
(1992), Sudhir Anand and Martin Ravallion (1993), Arrow
(1995), Meghnad Desai (1995), and Pattanaik (1997),
among other contributions. There have also been several
important symposia on the capability perspective, such as
Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia (1994) and
Notizie di Politeia (1996, Special Volume), including con-
tributions by Alessandro Balestrino (1994, 1996), Giovanni
Andrea Cornia (1994), Elena Granaglia (1994, 1996), En-
rica Chiappero Martinetti (1994, 1996), Sebastiano Bavetta
(1996), Ian Carter (1996), Leonardo Casini and Iacopo
Bernetti (1996), and Shahrashoub Razavi (1996); see also
Sen (1994, 1996b) with my responses to these contributions.
28
On this, see Sen (1970a, c, 1985b, 1992a, 1999a, b).
359
Pollak, 1991; Deaton, 1995).29 Others have
tried to use questionnaires and have looked for
regularities in people’s answers to questions
about relative well-being (see, for example,
Arie Kapteyn and Bernard M. S. van Praag,
1976).
There have also been illuminating works in
observing important features of living condi-
tions and in drawing conclusions on quality of
life and comparative living standards on that
basis; indeed there is a well-established tradi-
tion of Scandinavian studies in this area (see,
for example, Allardt et al. [1981] and Robert
Erikson and Rune Aberg [1987]). The literature
on “basic needs” and their fulfilment has also
provided an empirical approach to understand-
ing comparative deprivations.30 Further, under
the intellectual leadership of Mahbub ul Haq
(1995), the United Nations Development Pro-
gramme (UNDP) has made systematic use of a
particular type of informational broadening to
make comparisons based on observed features
of living conditions (reported in UNDP, Human
Development Reports).31
It is easy enough to pick holes in each of
these methodologies and to criticize the related
metrics of interpersonal comparisons. But there
can be little doubt about the welfare-economic
interest in the far-reaching uses of empirical
information that have emerged from these
works. They have substantially broadened our
understanding of individual advantages and
their empirical correlates. Each of these meth-
odologies clearly has some limitations as well
as virtues, and our evaluation of their relative
merits may well diverge, depending on our re-
spective priorities. I have had the occasion to
argue elsewhere (and briefly also in this lecture,
29
See also Slesnick (1998).
30
A good introduction to the basic needs approach can
be found in Paul Streeten et al. (1981). See also Irma
Adelman (1975), Dharam Ghai et al. (1977), James P. Grant
(1978), Morris D. Morris (1979), Chichilnisky (1980),
Nanak Kakwani (1981, 1984), Paul Streeten (1984), Frances
Stewart (1985), Robert Goodin (1988), and Alan Hamlin
and Phillip Pettit (1989), among other contributions. Focus-
ing on the fulfillment of “minimum needs” can be traced to
Pigou (1920).
31
See for example United Nations Development Pro-
gramme (1990) and the subsequent yearly Human Develop-
ment Reports. See also Sen (1973b, 1985a), Adelman
(1975), Grant (1978), Morris (1979), Streeten et al. (1981),
Desai (1995), and Anand and Sen (1997) on related issues.
360 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
earlier on) in favor of partial comparabilities
based on evaluation of capabilities,32 but be-
yond that specific issue (on which others may
well take a different view), I want to emphasize
here the more general point that the possibilities
of practical welfare economics and social
choice have been immensely widened through
these innovative, empirical works.
In fact, despite their differences, they fit in
general into the overall pattern of informa-
tional widening to which recent analytical
work in social choice theory has forcefully
pointed. The analytical systems explored in
the recent literature on welfare economics and
social choice are broader than those in the
Arrovian model (and correspondingly less
uptight, and less “impossible,” on which see
Sen, 1970a, 1977c).33 They are also analyti-
cally general enough to allow different
empirical interpretations and to permit alter-
native informational bases for social choice.
The diverse empirical methodologies, consid-
ered here, can all be seen in this broader
analytical perspective. The movements in
“high theory” have been, in this sense, closely
linked to the advances in “practical econom-
ics.” It is the sustained exploration of con-
structive possibilities—at the analytical as
well as practical levels—that has helped to
dispel some of the gloom that was associated
earlier with social choice and welfare
economics.
IX. Poverty and Famine
The variety of information on which social
welfare analysis can draw can be well illustrated
by the study of poverty. Poverty is typically
seen in terms of the lowness of incomes, and it
has been traditionally measured simply by
counting the number of people below the pov-
erty-line income; this is sometimes called the
head-count measure. A scrutiny of this ap-
proach yields two different types of questions.
First, is poverty adequately seen as low income?
32
See particularly Sen (1992a).
33
The literature on “implementation” has also grown in
the direction of practical application; for analyses of some
of the different issues involved, see Laffont (1979), Maskin
(1985), Moulin (1995), Suzumura (1995), Dutta (1997), and
Maskin and Tomas Sjöström (1999).
JUNE 1999
Second, even if poverty is seen as low income,
is the aggregate poverty of a society best char-
acterized by the index of the head-count
measure?
I take up these questions in turn. Do we get
enough of a diagnosis of individual poverty by
comparing the individual’s income with a so-
cially given poverty-line income? What about
the person with an income well above the pov-
erty line, who suffers from an expensive illness
(requiring, say, kidney dialysis)? Is deprivation
not ultimately a lack of opportunity to lead a
minimally acceptable life, which can be influ-
enced by a number of considerations, including
of course personal income, but also physical
and environmental characteristics, and other
variables (such as the availability and costs of
medical and other facilities)? The motivation
behind such an exercise relates closely to seeing
poverty as a serious deprivation of certain basic
capabilities. This alternative approach leads to a
rather different diagnosis of poverty from the
ones that a purely income-based analysis can
yield.34
This is not to deny that lowness of income
can be very important in many contexts, since
the opportunities a person enjoys in a market
economy can be severely constrained by her
level of real income. However, various con-
tingencies can lead to variations in the “con-
version” of income into the capability to live
a minimally acceptable life, and if that is what
we are concerned with, there may be good
reason to look beyond income poverty. There
are at least four different sources of variation:
(1) personal heterogeneities (for example,
proneness to illness), (2) environmental di-
versities (for example, living in a storm-prone
or flood-prone area), (3) variations in social
climate (for example, the prevalence of crime
or epidemiological vectors), and (4) differ-
ences in relative deprivation connected with
customary patterns of consumption in partic-
ular societies (for example, being relatively
impoverished in a rich society, which can lead
34
See Sen (1980, 1983b, 1985a, 1992a, 1993b, 1999a),
Kakwani (1984), Nussbaum (1988), Drèze and Sen (1989,
1995), Griffin and Knight (1990), Iftekhar Hossain (1990),
Schokkaert and Van Ootegem (1990), Nussbaum and Sen
(1993), Anand and Sen (1997), and Foster and Sen (1997),
among other contributions.
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
to deprivation of the absolute capability to
take part in the life of the community).35
There is, thus, an important need to go be-
yond income information in poverty analysis, in
particular to see poverty as capability depriva-
tion. However (as was discussed earlier), the
choice of the informational base for poverty
analysis cannot really be dissociated from prag-
matic considerations, particularly informational
availability. It is unlikely that the perspective of
poverty as income deprivation can be dispensed
with in the empirical literature on poverty, even
when the limitations of that perspective are en-
tirely clear. Indeed, in many contexts the rough-
and-ready way of using income information
may provide the most immediate approach to
the study of severe deprivation.36
For example, the causation of famines is of-
ten best seen in terms of a radical decline in the
real incomes of a section of the population,
leading to starvation and death (on this see Sen,
1976d, 1981).37 The dynamics of income earn-
ing and of purchasing power may indeed be the
most important component of a famine investi-
gation. This approach, in which the study of
causal influences on the determination of the
respective incomes of different groups plays a
central part, contrasts with an exclusive focus
on agricultural production and food supply,
35
On this see Sen (1992a) and Foster and Sen (1997).
The last concern—that a relative deprivation of income can
lead to an absolute deprivation of a basic capability—was
first discussed by Adam Smith (1776). Adam Smith’s claim
that “necessary goods” (and correspondingly minimum in-
comes needed to avoid basic deprivation) must be defined
differently for different societies also suggests a general
approach of using a parametrically variable “poverty-line”
income. Such variations can be used to reflect the disparate
conditions of different persons (including, for example,
proneness to illness). On these issues, see Deaton and
Muellbauer (1980, 1986), Jorgenson (1990), Pollak (1991),
Deaton (1995), and Slesnick (1998), among other contribu-
tions. Under certain conditions, the definition of poverty as
having an income below the parametrically determined
“poverty line” will be congruent with the characterization of
poverty as capability deprivation (if the parametric varia-
tions are firmly linked to the income needed to avoid spec-
ified levels of capability deprivation).
36
These issues are insightfully scrutinized by Philippe
Van Parijs (1995).
37
See also Mohiuddin Alamgir (1980), Ravallion
(1987), Drèze and Sen (1989, 1990), Jeffrey L. Coles and
Hammond (1995), Desai (1995), Osmani (1995), and Peter
Svedberg (1999), on related matters.
361
which is often found in the literature on this
subject.
The shift in informational focus from food sup-
ply to entitlements (involving incomes as well as
supply, and the resulting relative prices) can make
a radical difference, since famines can occur even
without any major decline—possibly without any
decline at all—of food production or supply.38 If,
for example, the incomes of rural wage laborers,
or of service providers, or of craftsmen collapse
through unemployment, or through a fall of real
wages, or through a decline in the demand for the
relevant services or craft products, the affected
groups may have to starve, even if the overall food
supply in the economy is undiminished. Starva-
tion occurs when some people cannot establish
entitlement over an adequate amount of food,
through purchase or through food production, and
the overall supply of food is only one influence
among many in the determination of the entitle-
ments of the respective groups of people in the
economy. Thus, an income-sensitive entitlement
approach can provide a better explanation of fam-
ines than can be obtained through an exclusively
production-oriented view. It can also yield a more
effective approach to the remedying of starvation
and hunger (on this see particularly Drèze and
Sen, 1989).
The nature of the problem tends to identify
the particular “space” on which the analysis has
to concentrate. It remains true that in explaining
the exact patterns of famine deaths and suffer-
ings, we can get additional understanding by
supplementing the income-based analysis with
information on the conversion of incomes into
nourishment, which will depend on various
other influences such as metabolic rates, prone-
ness to illness, body size, etc.39 These issues are
38
As empirical studies of famines bring out, some actual
famines have occurred with little or no decline in food
production (such as the Bengal famine of 1943, the Ethio-
pian famine of 1973, or the Bangladesh famine of 1974),
whereas others have been influenced substantially by de-
clines in food production (on this see Sen, 1981).
39
An important further issue is the distribution of food
within the family, which may be influenced by several
factors other than family income. Issues of gender inequal-
ity and the treatment of children and of old people can be
important in this context. Entitlement analysis can be ex-
tended in these directions by going beyond the family
income into the conventions and rules of intrafamily divi-
sion. On these issues, see Sen (1983b, 1984, 1990),
362 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
undoubtedly important for investigating the in-
cidence of nutritional failures, morbidities, and
mortalities. However, in a general analysis of
the occurrence and causation of famines, affect-
ing large groups, these additional matters may
be of secondary importance. While I shall not
enter further into the famine literature here, I
would like to emphasize that the informational
demands of famine analysis give an important
place to income deprivation which have more
immediacy and ready usability than the more
subtle—and ultimately more informed— dis-
tinctions based on capability comparisons (on
this see Sen [1981] and Drèze and Sen [1989]).
I turn now to the second question. The most
common and most traditional measure of pov-
erty had tended to concentrate on head count-
ing. But it must also make a difference as to
how far below the poverty line the poor indi-
vidually are, and furthermore, how the depriva-
tion is shared and distributed among the poor.
The social data on the respective deprivations of
the individuals who constitute the poor in a
society need to be aggregated together to arrive
at informative and usable measures of aggregate
poverty. This is a social choice problem, and
axioms can indeed be proposed that attempt to
capture our distributional concerns in this con-
structive exercise (on this see Sen, 1976b).40
Several distribution-sensitive poverty mea-
sures have been derived axiomatically in the
recent social choice literature, and various al-
ternative proposals have been analyzed. While I
shall, here, not go into a comparative assess-
ment of these measures (nor into axiomatic re-
quirements that can be used to discriminate
between them), elsewhere I have tried to ad-
dress this issue, jointly with James Foster (Fos-
ter and Sen, 1997).41 However, I would like to
Vaughan (1987), Drèze and Sen (1989), Barbara Harriss
(1990), Bina Agarwal (1994), Nancy Folbre (1995), Kanbur
(1995), and Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover (1995), among
other contributions.
40
The so-called “Sen measure of poverty” can, in fact,
be improved by an important but simple variation illumi-
natingly proposed by Anthony F. Shorrocks (1995). I have
to confess favoring the “Sen-Shorrocks measure” over the
original “Sen index.”
41
James Foster is a major contributor to the poverty
literature; see, for example, Foster (1984), Foster et al.
(1984), and Foster and Shorrocks (1988). For discussions of
some major issues in the choice of an aggregative measure
JUNE 1999
emphasize the fact that we face here an embar-
rassment of riches (the opposite of an impasse
or an impossibility), once the informational ba-
sis of social judgments has been appropriately
broadened. To axiomatize exactly a particular
poverty measure, we shall have to indulge in the
“brinkmanship” of which I spoke earlier (Sec-
tion V), by adding other axiomatic demands
until we are just short of an impossibility, with
only one surviving poverty measure.
X. Comparative Deprivation and
Gender Inequality
At one level, poverty cannot be dissociated
from the misery caused by it, and in this sense,
the classical perspective of utility also can be
invoked in this analysis. However, the mallea-
bility of mental attitudes, on which I com-
mented earlier, may tend to hide and muffle the
extent of deprivation in many cases. The indi-
gent peasant who manages to build some cheer
in his life should not be taken as nonpoor on
grounds of his mental accomplishment.
This adaptability can be particularly impor-
tant in dealing with gender inequality and de-
privation of women in traditionally unequal
societies. This is partly because perceptions
have a decisive part to play in the cohesion of
family life, and the culture of family living
tends to put a premium on making allies out of
the ill treated. Women may— often enough—
work much harder than men (thanks to the ri-
gours of household chores), and also receive
less attention in health care and nutrition, and
yet the perception that there is an incorrigible
of poverty, see also Anand (1977, 1983), Blackorby and
Donaldson (1978, 1980), Kanbur (1984), Atkinson (1987,
1989), Christian Seidl (1988), Satya R. Chakravarty (1990),
Camilo Dagum and Michele Zenga (1990), Ravallion
(1994), Frank A. Cowell (1995), and Shorrocks (1995),
among many others (there is an extensive bibliography of
this large literature in Foster and Sen, 1997). One of the
important issues to be addressed is the need for—and lim-
itations of—“decomposability” (and the weaker require-
ment of “subgroup consistency,” on which see also
Shorrocks, 1984). Foster (1984) gives arguments in favor of
decomposability (as did Anand, 1977, 1983), whereas Sen
(1973a, 1977c) presents arguments against it. There is a
serious attempt in Foster and Sen (1997) to assess both the
pros and the cons of decomposability and subgroup consis-
tency.
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
inequality here may well be missing in a society
in which asymmetric norms are quietly domi-
nant.42 This type of inequality and deprivation
may not, under these circumstances, adequately
surface in the scale of the mental metric of
dissatisfaction and discontent.
The socially cultivated sense of contentment
and serenity may even affect the perception of
morbidity and illness. When, many years ago, I
was working on a famine-related study of post-
famine Bengal in 1944, I was quite struck by the
remarkable fact that the widows surveyed had
hardly reported any incidence of being in “in-
different health,” whereas widowers, com-
plained massively about just that (Sen, 1985a
Appendix B). Similarly, it emerges in interstate
comparisons in India that the states that are
worst provided in education and health-care fa-
cilities typically report the lowest levels of per-
ceived morbidity, whereas states with good
health care and school education indicate higher
self-perception of illness (with the highest mor-
bidity reports coming from the best provided
states, such as Kerala).43 Mental reactions, the
mainstay of classical utility, can be a very de-
fective basis for the analysis of deprivation.
Thus, in understanding poverty and inequal-
ity, there is a strong case for looking at real
deprivation and not merely at mental reactions
to that deprivation. There have been many re-
cent investigations of gender inequality and
women’s deprivation in terms of undernutrition,
clinically diagnosed morbidity, observed illiter-
acy, and even unexpectedly high mortality
(compared with physiologically justified expec-
tations).44 Such interpersonal comparisons can
42
On this see Sen (1984, 1990, 1993c), and the literature
cited there.
43
The methodological issue underlying this problem in-
volves “positional objectivity”—what is observationally ob-
jective from a given position but may not be sustainable in
interpositional comparisons. This contrast and its far-reach-
ing relevance is discussed in Sen (1993c).
44
The literature on “missing women” (in comparison
with the expected number of women in the absence of
unusually high feminine mortality rates found in some so-
cieties) is one example of such empirical analysis; on this
see Sen (1984, 1992c), Vaughan (1987), Drèze and Sen
(1989, 1990), Ansley J. Coale (1991), and Stephan Klasen
(1994). See also Jocelyn Kynch and Sen (1983); Harriss
(1990); Ravi Kanbur and Lawrence Haddad (1990); Agar-
wal (1994); Folbre (1995); Nussbaum and Glover (1995),
among other works.
363
easily be a significant basis of studies of poverty
and of inequality between the sexes. They can
be accommodated within a broad framework of
welfare economics and social choice (enhanced
by the removal of informational constraints that
would rule out the use of these types of data).
XI. The Liberal Paradox
This lecture has included discussion of why and
how impossibility results in social choice can be
overcome through informational broadening. The
informational widening considered so far has been
mainly concerned with the use of interpersonal
comparisons. But this need not be the only form of
broadening that is needed in resolving an impasse
in social choice. Consider, for example, an impos-
sibility theorem which is sometimes referred to as
“the liberal paradox,” or “the impossibility of the
Paretian liberal” (Sen, 1970a, b, 1976c). The the-
orem shows the impossibility of satisfying even a
very minimal demand for liberty when combined
with an insistence on Pareto efficiency (given un-
restricted domain).45
Since there have been some debates on the
content of liberty in the recent literature (see, for
example, Nozick, 1974; Peter Gärdenfors, 1981;
Robert Sugden, 1981, 1985, 1993; Hillel Steiner,
1990; Gaertner et al., 1992; Deb, 1994; Marc
Fleurbaey and Gaertner, 1996; Pattanaik, 1996;
Suzumura, 1996), perhaps a quick explanatory
remark may be useful. Liberty has many different
aspects, including two rather distinct features: (1)
it can help us to achieve what we would choose to
achieve in our respective private domains, for
example, in personal life (this is its “opportunity
aspect”), and (2) it can leave us directly in charge
of choices over private domains, no matter what
we may or may not achieve (this is its “process
aspect”). In social choice theory, the formulation
of liberty has been primarily concerned with the
former, that is, the opportunity aspect. This may
have been adequate to show the possible conflict
between the Pareto principle and the opportunity
aspect of liberty (on which Sen [1970a, b] con-
centrated), but an exclusive concentration on the
45
There is also some analytical interest in the “source”
of the impossibility result involved here, particularly since
both “Pareto efficiency” and “minimal liberty” are charac-
terized in terms of the same set of preferences of the same
individuals. On this see Sen (1976c, 1992b).
364 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
opportunity aspect cannot provide an adequate
understanding of the demands of liberty (in this
respect, Sugden [1981, 1993] and Gaertner et al.
[1992] were certainly right to reject the sufficiency
of the opportunity-centered formulation in stan-
dard social choice theory).46 However, social
choice theory can also be made to accommodate
the process aspect of liberty through appropriate
recharacterization, and particularly through valu-
ing due process in addition to substantive oppor-
tunities (on this see Sen, 1982b, 1997a, 1999b;
Stig Kanger, 1985; Deb, 1994; Hammond, 1997;
Suzumura, 1996; Martin van Hees, 1996).
It is also important to avoid the opposite narrow-
ness of concentrating exclusively only on the process
aspect of liberty, as some recent writers have pre-
ferred to do. Important as processes are, this cannot
obliterate the relevance of the opportunity aspect
which too must count. Indeed, the importance of
effectiveness in the realization of liberty in one’s
personal life has been recognized as important for a
long time—even by commentators deeply con-
cerned with processes, from John Stuart Mill (1859)
to Frank Knight (1947), Friedrich A. Hayek (1960),
and Buchanan (1986). The difficulties of having to
weigh process fairness against effectiveness of out-
comes cannot be avoided simply by ignoring the
opportunity aspect of liberty, through an exclusive
concentration on the process aspect.47
How might the conflict of the Paretian liberal, in
particular, be resolved? Different ways of dealing
with this friction have been explored in the litera-
ture.48 However, it is important to see that unlike
46
The “impossibility of the Paretian liberal” does not,
however, get resolved simply by concentrating on the pro-
cess aspect of liberty, on which see Friedrich Breyer (1977),
Breyer and Gardner (1980), Sen (1983b, 1992b), Basu
(1984), Gaertner et al. (1992), Deb (1994), Binmore (1996),
Mueller (1996), Pattanaik (1996), and Suzumura (1996).
47
On these issues, see Hammond (1997) and also Seidl
(1975, 1997), Breyer (1977), Kanger (1985), Levi (1986),
Charles K. Rowley (1993), Deb (1994), Suzumura (1996),
and Pattanaik (1997).
48
See, for example, Seidl (1975, 1997), Suzumura (1976b,
1983, 1999), Gaertner and Lorenz Krüger (1981, 1983), Ham-
mond (1982, 1997), John L. Wriglesworth (1985), Levi (1986),
and Jonathan Riley (1987), among others. See also the sympo-
sium on the “‘Liberal Paradox” in Analyse & Kritik (September
1996), including: Binmore (1996), Breyer (1996), Buchanan
(1996), Fleurbaey and Gaertner (1996), Anthony de Jasay and
Hartmut Kliemt (1996), Kliemt (1996), Mueller (1996), Suzu-
mura (1996), and van Hees (1996). My own suggestions are
presented in Sen (1983a, 1992b, 1996a).
JUNE 1999
Arrow’s impossibility result, the liberal paradox can-
not be satisfactorily resolved through the use of in-
terpersonal comparisons. Indeed, neither the claims
of liberty, nor that of Pareto efficiency, need be
significantly contingent on interpersonal compari-
sons. The force of one’s claims over one’s private
domain lies in the personal nature of that choice—
not on the relative intensities of the preferences of
different persons over a particular person’s private
life. Also, Pareto efficiency depends on the congru-
ence of different persons’ preferences over a pair-
wise choice—not on the comparative strength of
those preferences.
Rather, the resolution of this problem lies
elsewhere, in particular in the need to see each
of these claims as being qualified by the impor-
tance of the other— once it is recognized that
they can be in possible conflict with each other
(indeed, the main point of the liberal paradox
was precisely to identify that possible conflict).
The recognition of the importance of effective
liberty in one’s private domain (precisely over
particular choices) can coexist with an acknowl-
edgement of the relevance of Paretian unanim-
ity over any pair (over all choices—whether in
one’s private domain or not). A satisfactory
resolution of this impossibility must include
taking an evaluative view of the acceptable pri-
orities between personal liberty and overall de-
sire fulfillment, and must be sensitive to the
information regarding the trade-offs on this that
the persons may themselves endorse. This too
calls for an informational enrichment (taking
note of people’s political values as well as in-
dividual desires), but this enrichment is of a
rather different kind from that of using inter-
personal comparisons of well-being or overall
advantage.49
XII. A Concluding Remark
Impossibility results in social choice theory—
led by the pioneering work of Arrow (1951)—
have often been interpreted as being thoroughly
destructive of the possibility of reasoned and dem-
ocratic social choice, including welfare economics
49
This may, formally, require a multistage social choice
exercise in the determination of these priorities, followed by
the use of those priorities in the choice over comprehensive
social states (on these issues, see Pattanaik, 1971; Sen,
1982b, 1992b, 1996, 1997a; Suzumura, 1996, 1999).
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
(Sections I–III, XI). I have argued against that
view. Indeed, Arrow’s powerful “impossibility
theorem” invites engagement, rather than resigna-
tion (Sections IV–V). We do know, of course, that
democratic decisions can sometimes lead to in-
congruities. To the extent that this is a feature of
the real world, its existence and reach are matters
for objective recognition. Inconsistencies arise
more readily in some situations than in others, and
it is possible to identify the situational differences
and to characterize the processes through consen-
sual and compatible decisions can emerge (Sec-
tions VI–VIII).
The impossibility results certainly deserve
serious study. They often have wide—indeed
sweeping—reach, not merely covering day-to-
day politics (where we may be rather used to
incongruity), but also questioning the possibil-
ity of any assured framework for making social
welfare judgments for the society as a whole.
Impossibilities thus identified also militate
against the general possibility of an orderly and
systematic framework for normatively assess-
ing inequality, for evaluating poverty, or for
identifying intolerable tyranny and violations of
liberty. Not to be able to have a coherent frame-
work for these appraisals or evaluations would
indeed be most damaging for systematic politi-
cal, social, and economic judgement. It would
not be possible to talk about injustice and un-
fairness without having to face the accusation
that such diagnoses must be inescapably arbi-
trary or intellectually despotic.
These bleak conclusions do not, however,
endure searching scrutiny, and fruitful proce-
dures that militate against such pessimism can
be clearly identified. This has indeed been
largely an upbeat lecture— emphasizing the
possibility of constructive social choice theory,
and arguing for a productive interpretation of
the impossibility results. Indeed, these appar-
ently negative results can be seen to be helpful
inputs in the development of an adequate frame-
work for social choice, since the axiomatic der-
ivation of a specific social choice procedure
must lie in between—and close to—an impos-
sibility, on one side, and an embarrassment of
riches, on the other (see Section V).
The possibility of constructive welfare eco-
nomics and social choice (and their use in mak-
ing social welfare judgments and in devising
practical measures with normative significance)
365
turns on the need for broadening the informa-
tional basis of such choice. Different types of
informational enrichment have been considered
in the literature. A crucial element in this broad-
ening is the use of interpersonal comparisons of
well-being and individual advantage. It is not
surprising that the rejection of interpersonal
comparisons must cause difficulties for rea-
soned social decision, since the claims of dif-
ferent persons, who make up the society, have
to be assessed against each other. We cannot
even understand the force of public concerns
about poverty, hunger, inequality, or tyranny,
without bringing in interpersonal comparisons
in one form or another. The information on
which our informal judgments on these matters
rely is precisely the kind of information that has
to be—and can be—incorporated in the formal
analysis of systematic social choice (Sections
VII–XI).
The pessimism about the possibility of inter-
personal comparisons that fuelled the “obituary
notices” for welfare economics (and substan-
tially fed the fear of impossibility in social
choice theory) was ultimately misleading for
two distinct reasons. First, it confined attention
to too narrow an informational base, overlook-
ing the different ways in which interpersonally
comparative statements can sensibly be made
and can be used to enrich the analysis of welfare
judgments and social choice. An overconcentra-
tion on comparisons of mental states crowded
out a plethora of information that can inform us
about the real advantages and disadvantages of
different persons, related to their substantive
well-being, freedoms, or opportunities. Second,
the pessimism was also based on demanding too
much precision in such comparisons, overlook-
ing the fact that even partial comparisons can
serve to enlighten the reasoned basis of wel-
fare economics, social ethics, and responsible
politics.50
Addressing these problems fits well into a
general program of strengthening social choice
theory (and “nonobituarial” welfare economics).
50
There are two distinct issues here. First, partial com-
parability can be very effective in generating an optimal
choice (Sen, 1970a, c). Second, even when an optimal al-
ternative does not emerge, it can help to narrow down the
maximal set of undominated alternatives to which a maxi-
mizing choice can be confined (Sen 1973a, 1993a, 1997a).
366 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
In general, informational broadening, in one
form or another, is an effective way of over-
coming social choice pessimism and of avoid-
ing impossibilities, and it leads directly
to constructive approaches with viability and
reach. Formal reasoning about postulated axi-
oms (including their compatibility and coher-
ence), as well as informal understanding of
values and norms (including their relevance and
plausibility), both point in that productive direc-
tion. Indeed, the deep complementarity between
formal and informal reasoning—so central to
the social sciences—is well illustrated by devel-
opments in modern social choice theory.
REFERENCES
Adelman, Irma. “Development Economics—A Re-
assessment of Goals.” American Economic Re-
view, May 1975 (Papers and Proceedings), 65(2),
pp. 302– 09.
Agarwal, Bina. A field of one’s own: Gender and
land rights in South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994.
Aizerman, Mark A. and Aleskerov, Fuad T. “Vot-
ing Operators in the Space of Choice Functions.”
Mathematical Social Sciences, June 1986, 11(3),
pp. 201– 42; Corrigendum, June 1988, 13(3), p.
305.
Alamgir, Mohiuddin. Famine in South Asia. Bos-
ton: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain, 1980.
Aleskerov, Fuad T. “Voting Models in the Arrovian
Framework,” in Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya K.
Sen, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds., Social choice
reexamined, Vol. 1. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1997, pp. 47– 67.
Allardt, Erik; Andrén, Nils; Friis, Erik J.; Gı́slason,
Gylfi I.; Nilson, Sten Sparre; Valen, Henry;
Wendt, Frantz and Wisti, Folmer, eds. Nordic
democracy: Ideas, issues, and institutions in pol-
itics, economy, education, social and cultural af-
fairs of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and
Sweden. Copenhagen: Det Danske Selksab, 1981.
Anand, Sudhir. “Aspects of Poverty in Malaysia.”
Review of Income and Wealth, March 1977, 23(1),
pp. 1–16.
. Inequality and poverty in Malaysia: Mea-
surement and decomposition. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1983.
Anand, Sudhir and Ravallion, Martin. “Human
Development in Poor Countries: On the Role of
Private Incomes and Public Services.” Journal of
JUNE 1999
Economic Perspectives, Winter 1993, 7(1), pp.
133–50.
Anand, Sudhir and Sen, Amartya K. “Concepts
of Human Development and Poverty: A Multi-
dimensional Perspective,” in United Nations De-
velopment Programme, Poverty and human
development: Human development papers 1997.
New York: United Nations, 1997, pp. 1–20.
Arneson, Richard J. “Equality and Equal Opportu-
nity for Welfare.” Philosophical Studies, May
1989, 56(1), pp. 77–93.
Arrow, Kenneth J. “A Difficulty in the Concept of
Social Welfare.” Journal of Political Economy,
August 1950, 58(4), pp. 328 – 46.
. Social choice and individual values. New
York: Wiley, 1951.
. “Le Principe de Rationalité dans les Dé-
cisions Collectives.” Économie Appliquée,
October–December 1952, 5(4), pp. 469 – 84.
. Social choice and individual values, 2nd
Ed. New York: Wiley, 1963.
. “Extended Sympathy and the Possibility of
Social Choice.” American Economic Review, Feb-
ruary 1977 (Papers and Proceedings), 67(1), pp.
219 –25.
. “A Note on Freedom and Flexibility,” in
Kaushik Basu, Prasanta K. Pattanaik, and Ko-
taro Suzumura, eds., Choice, welfare, and de-
velopment: A festschrift in honour of Amartya
K. Sen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995,
pp. 7–16.
Arrow, Kenneth J.; Sen, Amartya K. and Suzu-
mura, Kotaro. Social choice re-examined, Vols. 1
and 2. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Atkinson, Anthony B. “On the Measurement of In-
equality.” Journal of Economic Theory, Septem-
ber 1970, 2(3), pp. 244 – 63.
. Social justice and public policy. Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983.
. “On the Measurement of Poverty.” Econo-
metrica, July 1987, 55(4), pp. 749 – 64.
. Poverty and social security. New York:
Wheatsheaf, 1989.
. “Capabilities, Exclusion, and the Supply of
Goods,” in Kaushik Basu, Prasanta K. Pattanaik, and
Kotaro Suzumura, eds., Choice, welfare, and devel-
opment: A festschrift in honour of Amartya K. Sen.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 17–31.
Atkinson, Anthony B. and Bourguignon, Francois.
“The Comparison of Multidimensional Distribu-
tions of Economic Status.” Review of Economic
Studies, April 1982, 49(2), pp. 183–201.
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
. “Income Distribution and Differences in
Needs,” in G. R. Feiwel, ed., Arrow and the foun-
dation of economic policy. London: Macmillan,
1987, pp. 350 –70.
Baigent, Nick. “Norms, Choice and Preferences.” Mimeo,
Institute of Public Economics, University of Graz, Aus-
tria, Research Memorandum No. 9306, 1994.
Balestrino, Alessandro. “Poverty and Functionings:
Issues in Measurement and Public Action.” Gior-
nale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia, July–
September 1994, 53(7–9), pp. 389 – 406.
. “A Note on Functioning-Poverty in Afflu-
ent Societies.” Notizie di Politeia, 1996, 12(43–
44), pp. 97–105.
Bandyopadhyay, Taradas. “Rationality, Path Inde-
pendence, and the Power Structure.” Journal of
Economic Theory, December 1986, 40(2), pp.
338 – 48.
Barberá, Salvador. “Pivotal Voters: A New Proof of
Arrow’s Theorem.” Economics Letters, 1980, 6,
pp. 13–16.
. “Pivotal Voters: A Simple Proof of Ar-
row’s Theorem,” in Prasanta K. Pattanaik and
Maurice Salles, eds., Social choice and welfare.
Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1983, pp. 31–35.
Barberá, Salvador and Sonnenschein, Hugo F.
“Preference Aggregation with Randomized Social
Orderings.” Journal of Economic Theory, August
1978, 18(2), pp. 244 –54.
Barker, E. The politics of Aristotle. London: Oxford
University Press, 1958.
Basu, Kaushik. Revealed preference of government.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
. “The Right to Give Up Rights.” Eco-
nomica, November 1984, 51(204), pp. 413–22.
. “Achievements, Capabilities and the Con-
cept of Well-Being: A Review of Commodities
and Capabilities by Amaryta Sen.” Social Choice
and Welfare, March 1987, 4(1), pp. 69 –76.
Basu, Kaushik; Pattanaik, Prasanta K. and Suzu-
mura, Kotaro, eds. Choice, welfare, and devel-
opment: A festschrift in honour of Amartya K. Sen.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Baumol, William. Welfare economics and the theory
of the state, 2nd Ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1952, 1965.
Bavetta, Sebastiano. “Individual Liberty, Control
and the ‘Freedom of Choice Literature’.” Notizie
di Politeia, 1996, 12(43– 44), pp. 23–29.
Bentham, Jeremy. An introduction to the principles
of morals and legislation. London: Payne, 1789;
republished, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.
367
Bergson, Abram. “A Reformulation of Certain As-
pects of Welfare Economics.” Quarterly Journal
of Economics, February 1938, 52(1), pp. 310 –34.
Bezembinder, T. and van Acker, P. “Intransitivity
in Individual and Group Choice,” in E. D. Lanter-
mann and H. Feger, eds., Similarity and choice:
Essays in honor of Clyde Coombs. New York:
Wiley, 1980, pp. 208 –33.
Binmore, Ken. “An Example in Group Preference.”
Journal of Economic Theory, June 1975, 10(3),
pp. 377– 85.
. Playing fair: Game theory and the social
contract, Vol. I. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1994.
. “Right or Seemly?” Analyse & Kritik, Sep-
tember 1996, 18(1), pp. 67– 80.
Black, Duncan. “The Decisions of a Committee Us-
ing a Special Majority.” Econometrica, July 1948,
16(3), pp. 245– 61.
. The theory of committees and elections.
London: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
Blackorby, Charles. “Degrees of Cardinality and
Aggregate Partial Orderings.” Econometrica, Sep-
tember–November 1975, 43(5– 6), pp. 845–52.
Blackorby, Charles and Donaldson, David. “Mea-
sures of Relative Equality and Their Meaning in
Terms of Social Welfare.” Journal of Economic
Theory, June 1978, 18(1), pp. 59 – 80.
. “Ethical Indices for the Measurement of
Poverty.” Econometrica, May 1980, 48(4), pp.
1053– 60.
Blackorby, Charles; Donaldson, David and Wey-
mark, John A. “Social Choice with Interpersonal
Utility Comparisons: A Diagrammatic Introduc-
tion.” International Economic Review, June 1984,
25(2), pp. 325–56.
Blair, Douglas H.; Bordes, Georges A.; Kelly,
Jerry S. and Suzumura, Kotaro. “Impossibility
Theorems without Collective Rationality.” Jour-
nal of Economic Theory, December 1976, 13(3),
pp. 361–79.
Blair, Douglas H. and Pollak, Robert A. “Collec-
tive Rationality and Dictatorship: The Scope of the
Arrow Theorem.” Journal of Economic Theory,
August 1979, 21(1), pp. 186 –94.
. “Acyclic Collective Choice Rules.” Econo-
metrica, July 1982, 50(4), pp. 931– 44.
Blau, Julian H. “The Existence of Social Welfare
Functions.” Econometrica, April 1957, 25(2), pp.
302–13.
. “A Direct Proof of Arrow’s Theorem.”
Econometrica, January 1972, 40(1), pp. 61– 67.
368 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
. “Semiorders and Collective Choice.” Jour-
nal of Economic Theory, August 1979, 21(1), pp.
195–206.
Blau, Julian H. and Deb, Rajat. “Social Decision
Functions and Veto.” Econometrica, May 1977,
45(4), pp. 871–79.
Borda, J. C. “Mémoire sur les Élections au Scrutin.”
Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences (Par-
is), 1781. [Translated by Alfred de Grazia, “Math-
ematical Derivation of an Election System.” Isis,
June 1953, 44(1–2), pp. 42–51.]
Bordes, Georges A. “Consistency, Rationality, and
Collective Choice.” Review of Economic Studies,
October 1976, 43(3), pp. 447–57.
. “Some More Results on Consistency, Ra-
tionality and Collective Choice,” in Jean-Jacques
Laffont, ed., Aggregation and revelation of pref-
erences. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1979, pp.
175–97.
Bourguignon, F. and Fields, G. “Poverty Mea-
sures and Anti-poverty Policy.” Récherches
Economiques de Louvain, 1990, 56(3– 4), pp.
409 –27.
Brams, Steven J. Game theory and politics. New
York: Free Press, 1975.
Breyer, Friedrich. “The Liberal Paradox, Decisive-
ness over Issues and Domain Restrictions.”
Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie, 1977, 37(1–2),
pp. 45– 60.
. “Comment on the Papers by Buchanan and
by de Jasay and Kliemt.” Analyse & Kritik, Sep-
tember 1996, 18(1), pp. 148 –57.
Breyer, Friedrich and Gardner, Roy. “Liberal Par-
adox, Game Equilibrium, and Gibbard Optimum.”
1980, Public Choice, 35(4), pp. 469 – 81.
Brown, Donald J. “An Approximate Solution to
Arrow’s Problem.” Journal of Economic Theory,
December 1974, 9(4), pp. 375– 83.
. “Acyclic Aggregation over a Finite Set of
Alternatives.” Cowles Foundation Discussion Pa-
per No. 391, Yale University, 1975.
Buchanan, James M. “Social Choice, Democracy,
and Free Markets.” Journal of Political Economy,
April 1954a, 62(2), pp. 114 –23.
. “Individual Choice in Voting and Market.”
Journal of Political Economy, August 1954b,
62(3), pp. 334 – 43.
. Liberty, market and state. Brighton, U.K.:
Wheatsheaf, 1986.
. “An Ambiguity in Sen’s Alleged Proof of
the Impossibility of a Pareto Libertarian.” Analyse
& Kritik, September 1996, 18(1), pp. 118 –25.
JUNE 1999
Buchanan, James M. and Tullock, Gordon. The
calculus of consent. Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Press, 1962.
Campbell, Donald E. “Democratic Preference Func-
tions.” Journal of Economic Theory, April 1976,
12(2), pp. 259 –72.
. Equity, efficiency, and social choice. Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Campbell, Donald E. and Kelly, Jerry S. “The
Possibility-Impossibility Boundary in Social
Choice,” in Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya K. Sen,
and Kotaro Suzumura, eds., Social choice re-ex-
amined, Vol. 1. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1997, pp. 179 –204.
Caplin, Andrew and Nalebuff, Barry. “On 64%-
Majority Rule.” Econometrica, July 1988, 56(4),
pp. 787– 814.
. “Aggregation and Social Choice: A Mean
Voter Theorem.” Econometrica, January 1991,
59(1), pp. 1–24.
Carter, Ian. “The Concept of Freedom in the Work
of Amartya Sen: An Alternative Analysis Consis-
tent with Freedom’s Independent Value.” Notizie
di Politeia, 1996, 12(43– 44), pp. 7–22.
Casini, Leonardo and Bernetti, Iacopo. “Public
Project Evaluation, Environment and Sen’s Theo-
ry.” Notizie di Politeia, 1996, 12(43– 44), pp. 55–
78.
Chakravarty, Satya R. Ethical social index num-
bers. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1990.
Chichilnisky, Graciela. “Basic Needs and Global
Models.” Alternatives, 1980, 6.
. “Topological Equivalence of the Pareto
Condition and the Existence of a Dictator.” Jour-
nal of Mathematical Economics, March 1982a,
9(3), pp. 223–34.
. “Social Aggregation Rules and Continu-
ity.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1982b,
97(2), pp. 337–52.
Chichilnisky, Graciela and Heal, Geoffrey. “Nec-
essary and Sufficient Conditions for Resolution of
the Social Choice Paradox.” Journal of Economic
Theory, October 1983, 31(1), pp. 68 – 87.
Coale, Ansley J. “Excess Female Mortality and the
Balance of Sexes: An Estimate of the Number of
‘Missing Females’.” Population and Development
Review, September 1991, 17(3), pp. 517–23.
Cohen, G. A. “On the Currency of Egalitarian Jus-
tice.” Ethics, July 1989, 99(4), pp. 906 – 44.
. “Equality of What? On Welfare, Goods
and Capabilities.” Récherches Economiques de
Louvain, 1990, 56(3– 4), pp. 357– 82.
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
Coles, Jeffrey L. and Hammond, Peter J. “Walra-
sian Equilibrium without Survival: Existence, Ef-
ficiency, and Remedial Policy,” in Kaushik Basu,
Prasanta K. Pattanaik, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds.,
Choice, welfare, and development: A festschrift in
honour of Amartya K. Sen. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1995, pp. 32– 64.
Condorcet, Marquis de. Essai sur l’application de
l’analyse à la probabilité des décisions rendues à
la pluralité des voix. Paris: L’Imprimerie Royale,
1785.
Cornia, Giovanni Andrea. “Poverty in Latin Amer-
ica in the Eighties: Extent, Causes and Possible
Remedies.” Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di
Economia, July–September 1994, 53(7–9), pp.
407–34.
Coulhon, T. and Mongin, Philippe. “Social Choice
Theory in the Case of von Neumann-Morgenstern
Utilities.” Social Choice and Welfare, July 1989,
6(3), pp. 175– 87.
Cowell, Frank A. Measuring inequality, 2nd Ed.
London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995.
Crocker, David. “Functioning and Capability: The
Foundations of Sen’s and Nussbaum’s Develop-
ment Ethic.” Political Theory, November 1992,
20(4), pp. 584 – 612.
Dagum, Camilo and Zenga, Michele. Income and
wealth distribution, inequality and poverty. Berlin:
Springer-Verlag, 1990.
Dasgupta, Partha; Hammond, Peter J. and
Maskin, Eric S. “Implementation of Social
Choice Rules.” Review of Economic Studies, April
1979, 46(2), pp. 181–216.
Dasgupta, Partha; Sen, Amartya K. and Starrett,
David. “Notes on the Measurement of Inequality.”
Journal of Economic Theory, April 1973, 6(2), pp.
180 – 87.
d’Aspremont, Claude. “Axioms for Social Welfare
Ordering,” in Leonid Hurwicz, David Schmeidler,
and Hugo Sonnenschein, eds., Social goals and
social organization. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1985, pp. 19 –76.
d’Aspremont, Claude and Gevers, Louis. “Equity
and Informational Basis of Collective Choice.”
Review of Economic Studies, June 1977, 44(2), pp.
199 –209.
d’Aspremont, Claude and Mongin, Philippe. “A
Welfarist Version of Harsanyi’s Aggregation The-
orem.” Center for Operations Research and
Econometrics Discussion Paper No. 9763, Univer-
site Catholique de Louvain, 1997.
Davidson, Donald. “Judging Interpersonal Inter-
369
ests,” in Jon Elster and Aanund Hylland, eds.,
Foundations of social choice theory. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 195–211.
Davis, Otto A.; DeGroot, Morris H. and Hinich,
Melvin J. “Social Preference Orderings and Ma-
jority Rule.” Econometrica, January 1972, 40(1),
pp. 147–57.
Deaton, Angus S. Microeconometric analysis for
development policy: An approach from household
surveys. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press (for the World Bank), 1995.
Deaton, Angus S. and Muellbauer, John. Econom-
ics and consumer behaviour. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1980.
. “On Measuring Child Costs: With Appli-
cations to Poor Countries.” Journal of Political
Economy, August 1986, 94(4), pp. 720 – 44.
Deb, Rajat. “On Constructing Generalized Voting
Paradoxes.” Review of Economic Studies, June
1976, 43(2), pp. 347–51.
. “On Schwartz’s Rule.” Journal of Eco-
nomic Theory, October 1977, 16(1), pp. 103–10.
. “Waiver, Effectivity and Rights as Game
Forms.” Economica, May 1994, 16(242), pp. 167–
78.
de Jasay, Anthony and Kliemt, Hartmut. ‘‘The
Paretian Liberal, His Liberties and His Con-
tracts.’’ Analyse & Kritik, September 1996, 18(1),
pp. 126 – 47.
Denicolò, Vincenzo. “Independent Social Choice
Correspondences Are Dictatorial.” Economics
Letters, 1985, 19, pp. 9 –12.
Desai, Meghnad. Poverty, famine and economic de-
velopment. Aldershot, U.K.: Elgar, 1995.
Deschamps, Robert and Gevers, Louis. “Leximin
and Utilitarian Rules: A Joint Characterization.”
Journal of Economic Theory, April 1978, 17(2),
pp. 143– 63.
Dodgson, C. L. (Carroll, Lewis). Facts, figures, and
fancies, relating to the elections to the Hebdoma-
dal Council, the offer of the Clarendon Trustees,
and the proposal to convert the parks into cricket
grounds. Oxford: Parker, 1874.
. The principles of parliamentary represen-
tation. London: Harrison and Sons, 1884.
Drèze, Jean and Sen, Amartya. Hunger and public
action. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
. Economic development and social oppor-
tunity. Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press,
1995.
, eds. Political economy of hunger, Vols.
1–3. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
370 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
. Indian development: Selected regional per-
spectives. Delhi; New York: Oxford University
Press, 1997.
D’Souza, Frances, ed. Starving in silence: A report
on famine and censorship. London: International
Centre on Censorship, 1990.
Dutta, Bhaskar. “On the Possibility of Consistent
Voting Procedures.” Review of Economic Studies,
April 1980, 47(3), pp. 603–16.
. “Reasonable Mechanisms and Nash Imple-
mentation,” in Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya K. Sen,
and Kotaro Suzumura, eds., Social choice re-
examined, Vol. 2. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1997, pp. 3–23.
Dutta, Bhaskar and Pattanaik, Prasanta K. “On
Nicely Consistent Voting Systems.” Economet-
rica, January 1978, 46(1), pp. 163–70.
Dworkin, Ronald. “What Is Equality? Part 1: Equal-
ity of Welfare” and “What Is Equality? Part 2:
Equality of Resources.” Philosophy and Public
Affairs, Fall 1981, 10(4), pp. 283–345.
Edgeworth, Francis T. Mathematical psychics: An
essay on the application of mathematics to the
moral sciences. London: Kegan Paul, 1881.
Elster, Jon and Hylland, Aanund, eds. Foundations
of social choice theory. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986.
Elster, Jon and Roemer, John, eds. Interpersonal
comparisons of well-being. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1991.
Erikson, Robert and Aberg, Rune. Welfare in tran-
sition: A survey of living conditions in Sweden,
1968 –1981. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1987.
Feldman, Alan M. Welfare economics and social
choice theory. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980.
Ferejohn, John A. and Grether, David M. “On a
Class of Rational Social Decision Procedures.”
Journal of Economic Theory, August 1974, 8(4),
pp. 471– 82.
Fine, Ben J. “A Note on ‘Interpersonal Aggregation
and Partial Comparability’.” Econometrica, Janu-
ary 1975a, 43(1), pp. 173–74.
. “Individual Liberalism in a Paretian Soci-
ety.” Journal of Political Economy, December
1975b, 83(6), pp. 1277– 81.
Fishburn, Peter C. The theory of social choice.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1973.
. “On Collective Rationality and a General-
ized Impossibility Theorem.” Review of Economic
Studies, October 1974, 41(4), pp. 445–57.
JUNE 1999
Fisher, Franklin M. ‘‘Income Distribution, Value
Judgments and Welfare.’’ Quarterly Journal of
Economics, August 1956, 70, pp. 380 – 424.
. ‘‘Household Equivalence Scales and Inter-
personal Comparisons.’’ Review of Economic
Studies, July 1987, 54(3), pp. 519 –24.
. ‘‘Household Equivalence Scales: Reply.’’
Review of Economic Studies, April 1990, 57(2),
pp. 329 –30.
Fleurbaey, Marc and Gaertner, Wulf. “Admissi-
bility and Feasibility in Game Form.” Analyse &
Kritik, September 1996, 18(1), pp. 54 – 66.
Folbre, Nancy. Who pays for the kids: Gender and
the structure of constraint. New York, Routledge,
1995.
Foley, Duncan. “Resource Allocation and the Public
Sector.” Yale Economic Essays, Spring 1967, 7(1),
pp. 73–76.
Foster, James. “On Economic Poverty: A Survey of
Aggregate Measures.” Advances in Econometrics,
1984, 3, pp. 215–51.
Foster, James; Greer, Joel and Thorbecke, Erik.
“A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures.”
Econometrica, May 1984, 52(3), pp. 761– 66.
Foster, James and Sen, Amartya K. “On Economic
Inequality After a Quarter Century”; annexe in
Sen (1997c).
Foster, James and Shorrocks, Anthony F. “Poverty
Orderings.” Econometrica, January 1988, 56(1),
pp. 173–77.
Gaertner, Wulf. “An Analysis and Comparison of
Several Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for
Transitivity Under the Majority Decision Rule,” in
Jean-Jacques Laffont, ed., Aggregation and reve-
lation of preferences. Amsterdam: North-Holland,
1979, pp. 91–112.
. ‘‘Equity- and Inequity-type Borda Rules.’’
Mathematical Social Sciences, April 1983, 4(2),
pp. 137–54.
. “Domain Conditions in Social Choice The-
ory.” Mimeo, University of Osnabruck, Germany,
1998.
Gaertner, Wulf and Krüger, Lorenz. ‘‘Self-Sup-
porting Preferences and Individual Rights: The
Possibility of a Paretian Libertarianism.’’ Eco-
nomica, February 1981, 48(189), pp. 17–28.
. ‘‘Alternative Libertarian Claims and Sen’s
Paradox.’’ Theory and Decision, 1983, 15, pp.
211–30.
Gaertner, Wulf; Pattanaik, Prasanta K. and Su-
zumura, Kotaro. “Individual Rights Revisited.”
Economica, May 1992, 59(234), pp. 161–78.
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
Gärdenfors, Peter. “Rights, Games and Social
Choice.” Noûs, September 1981, 15(3), pp. 341–56.
Geanakopolous, John. “Three Brief Proofs of Arrow’s
Impossibility Theorem.” Cowles Foundation Discus-
sion Paper No. 1128, Yale University, 1996.
Gehrlein, William V. “Condorcet’s Paradox.” The-
ory and Decision, June 1983, 15(2), pp. 161–97.
Gevers, Louis. “On Interpersonal Comparability and
Social Welfare Orderings.” Econometrica, Janu-
ary 1979, 47(1), pp. 75– 89.
Ghai, Dharam; Khan, Azizur R.; Lee, E. and
Alfthan, T. A. The basic needs approach to de-
velopment. Geneva: International Labour Organi-
zation, 1977.
Gibbard, Allan F. “Manipulation of Voting
Schemes: A General Result.” Econometrica, July
1973, 41(4), pp. 587– 601.
. ‘‘Interpersonal Comparisons: Preference,
Good, and the Intrinsic Reward of a Life,’’ in Jon
Elster and Aanund Hylland, eds., Foundations of
social choice theory. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1986, pp. 165–93.
Goodin, Robert. Reasons for welfare. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1988.
Granaglia, Elena. ‘‘Piu o Meno Equaglianza di Ri-
sorse? Un Falso Problema per le Politiche So-
ciali.’’ Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di
Economia, July–September 1994, 53(7–9), pp.
349 – 66.
. ‘‘Two Questions to Amartya Sen.’’ Notizie
di Politeia, 1996, 12(43– 44), pp. 31–35.
Grandmont, Jean-Michel. “Intermediate Preferences
and the Majority Rule.” Econometrica, March 1978,
46(2), pp. 317–30.
Grant, James P. Disparity reduction rates in social
indicators. Washington, DC: Overseas Develop-
ment Council, 1978.
Green, Jerry and Laffont, Jean-Jacques. Incen-
tives in public decision-making. Amersterdam,
North-Holland, 1979.
Grether, David M. and Plott, Charles R. “Nonbi-
nary Social Choice: An Impossibility Theorem.”
Review of Economic Studies, January 1982, 49(1),
pp. 143–50.
Griffin, Keith and Knight, John, eds. Human de-
velopment and international development strategy
for the 1990s. London: Macmillan, 1990.
Groves, Ted and Ledyard, John. “Optimal Alloca-
tion of Public Goods: A Solution to the ‘Free
Rider’ Problem.” Econometrica, July 1977, 45(4),
pp. 783– 809.
Guinier, Lani. The tyranny of the majority: Funda-
371
mental fairness in representative democracy. New
York: Free Press, 1991.
Hamlin, Alan and Pettit, Phillip, eds. The good
polity: Normative analysis of the state. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1989.
Hammond, Peter J. “Equity, Arrow’s Conditions,
and Rawls’ Difference Principle.” Econometrica,
July 1976, 44(4), pp. 793– 804.
. “Dual Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility
and the Welfare Economics of Income Distribu-
tion.” Journal of Public Economics, February
1977, 7(1), pp. 51–71.
. “Liberalism, Independent Rights, and the
Pareto Principle,” in L. J. Cohen, J. Los, H.
Pfeiffer, and K.-P. Podewski, eds., Logic, method-
ology, and the philosophy of science, Vol. 6. Am-
sterdam: North-Holland, 1982, pp. 217– 43.
. “Welfare Economics,” in George R. Fei-
wel, ed., Issues in contemporary microeconomics
and welfare. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1985, pp. 405–34.
. “Game Forms versus Social Choice Rules
as Models of Rights,” in Kenneth J. Arrow, Am-
artya K. Sen, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds., Social
choice re-examined, Vol. 2. New York: St Mar-
tin’s Press, 1997, pp. 82–95.
Hansson, Bengt. “Choice Structures and Preference
Relations.” Synthese, October 1968, 18(4), pp.
443–58.
. “Group Preferences.” Econometrica, Janu-
ary 1969a, 37(1), pp. 50 –54.
. “Voting and Group Decision Functions.”
Synthese, December 1969b, 20(4), pp. 526 –37.
. “The Existence of Group Preferences.”
Public Choice, Winter 1976, 28(28), pp. 89 –98.
Haq, Mahbub ul. Reflections on human develop-
ment. New York: Oxford University Press,
1995.
Harriss, Barbara. “The Intrafamily Distribution of
Hunger in South Asia,” in Jean Drèze and Amartya
Sen, eds., The political economy of hunger. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 351–424.
Harsanyi, John C. “Cardinal Welfare, Individualist
Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility.”
Journal of Political Economy, August 1955, 63(3),
pp. 309 –21.
Hayek, Friedrich A. The constitution of liberty.
London: Routledge, 1960.
Heller, Walter P.; Starr, Ross M. and Starrett,
David A., eds. Social choice and public decision
making: Essays in honor of Kenneth J. Arrow, Vol.
1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
372 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
Hossain, Iftekhar. Poverty as capability failure.
Helsinki: Swedish School of Economics, 1990.
Human Rights Watch. Indivisible human rights:
The relationship between political and civil rights
to survival, subsistence, and poverty. New York:
Human Rights Watch, 1992.
Hurwicz, Leo; Schmeidler, David and Sonnens-
chein, Hugo, eds. Social goals and social organi-
zation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1985.
Inada, Ken-ichi. “The Simple Majority Decision Rule.”
Econometrica, July 1969, 37(3), pp. 490–506.
. “Majority Rule and Rationality.” Journal
of Economic Theory, March 1970, 2(1), pp. 27–
40.
Jorgenson, Dale W. “Aggregate Consumer Behavior
and the Measurement of Social Welfare.” Econo-
metrica, September 1990, 58(5), pp. 1007– 40.
Jorgenson, Dale W.; Lau, Lawrence and Stoker,
Thomas. “Welfare Comparison under Exact Ag-
gregation.” American Economic Review, May
1980 (Papers and Proceedings), 70(2), pp. 268 –
72.
Kakwani, Nanak. “Welfare Measures: An Interna-
tional Comparison.” Journal of Development Eco-
nomics, February 1981, 8(1), pp. 21– 45.
. “Issues in Measuring Poverty.” Advances
in Econometrics, 1984, 3, pp. 253– 82.
Kalai, Ehud and Muller, E. “Characterization of
Domains Admitting Nondictatorial Social Welfare
Functions and Nonmanipulable Voting Rules.”
Journal of Economic Theory, December 1977,
16(2), pp. 457– 69.
Kanbur, Ravi. “The Measurement and Decomposi-
tion of Inequality and Poverty,” in Frederick van
der Ploeg, ed., Mathematical methods in econom-
ics. New York: Wiley, 1984, pp. 403–32.
. “Children and Intra-Household Inequality:
A Theoretical Analysis,” in Kaushik Basu, Pras-
anta K. Pattanaik, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds.,
Choice, welfare, and development: A festschrift in
honour of Amartya K. Sen. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1995, pp. 242–52.
Kanbur, Ravi and Haddad, Lawrence. “How Se-
rious Is the Neglect of Intrahousehold Inequality?”
Economic Journal, September 1990, 100(402), pp.
866 – 81.
Kanger, Stig. “On Realization of Human Rights.”
Acta Philosophica Fennica, May 1985, 38, pp.
71–78.
Kapteyn, Arie and van Praag, Bernard M. S. “A
New Approach to the Construction of Family
JUNE 1999
Equivalent Scales.” European Economic Review,
May 1976, 7(4), pp. 313–35.
Kelly, Jerry S. “Voting Anomalies, the Number of
Voters, and the Number of Alternatives.” Econo-
metrica, March 1974a, 42(2), pp. 239 –51.
. “Necessity Conditions in Voting Theory.”
Journal of Economic Theory, June 1974b, 8(2),
pp. 149 – 60.
. Arrow impossibility theorems. New York:
Academic Press, 1978.
. Social choice theory: An introduction. Ber-
lin: Springer-Verlag, 1987.
Kelsey, David. “Acyclic Choice without the Pareto
Principle.” Review of Economic Studies, October
1984a, 51(4), pp. 693–99.
. ‘‘The Structure of Social Decision Func-
tions.’’ Mathematical Social Sciences, December
1984b, 8(3), pp. 241–52.
Kirman, Alan P. and Sondermann, Dieter. “Ar-
row’s Theorem, Many Agents, and Invisible Dic-
tators.” Journal of Economic Theory, October
1972, 5(2), pp. 267–77.
Klasen, Stephan. “Missing Women Reconsidered.”
World Development, July 1994, 22(7), pp. 1061–71.
Kliemt, Hartmut. ‘‘Das Paradox des Liberalis-
mus— eine Einführung.’’ Analyse & Kritik, Sep-
tember 1996, 18(1), pp. 1–19.
Knight, Frank. Freedom and reform: Essays in eco-
nomic and social philosophy. New York: Harper,
1947; republished, Indianapolis, IN: Liberty, 1982.
Kolm, Serge-Christophe. “The Optimum Produc-
tion of Social Justice,” in J. Margolis and H.
Guitton, eds., Public economics. New York: Mac-
millan, 1969, pp. 145–200.
Kynch, Jocelyn and Sen, Amartya K. ‘‘Indian
Women: Well-Being and Survival.’’ Cambridge
Journal of Economics, September–December
1983, 7(3– 4), pp. 363– 80.
Laffont, Jean-Jacques, ed. Aggregation and revela-
tion of preference. Amsterdam: North-Holland,
1979.
Laffont, Jean-Jacques and Maskin, Eric. ‘‘The
Theory of Incentives: An Overview,’’ in Werner
Hildenbrand, ed., Advances in economic theory.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982,
pp. 31–94.
Le Breton, Michel and Weymark, John. “An Intro-
duction to Arrovian Social Welfare Functions in the
Economic and Political Domains,” in Norman
Schofield, ed., Collective decision-making: Social
choice and political economy. Boston: Kluwer,
1996.
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
Levi, Isaac. Hard choices. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986.
Levin, Jonathan and Nalebuff, Barry. “An Intro-
duction to Vote-Counting Schemes.” Journal of
Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995, 9(1), pp.
3–26.
Little, Ian. A critique of welfare economics, 2nd Ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957.
Majumdar, Tapas. “A Note on Arrow’s Postulates
for Social Welfare Function—A Comment.” Jour-
nal of Political Economy, July/August 1969, Pt. I,
77(4), pp. 528 –31.
. “Amartya Sen’s Algebra of Collective
Choice.” Sankhya, December 1973, Series B,
35(4), pp. 533– 42.
Marshall, Alfred. Principles of economics. London:
Macmillan, 1890; 9th Ed., 1961.
Martinetti, Enrica Chiappero. ‘‘A New Approach
to Evaluation of Well-Being and Poverty by Fuzzy
Set Theory.’’ Giornale degli Economisti e Annali
di Economia, July–September 1994, 53(7–9), pp.
367– 88.
. ‘‘Standard of Living Evaluation Based on
Sen’s Approach: Some Methodological Sugges-
tions.’’ Notizie di Politeia, 1996, 12(43– 44), pp.
37–53.
Mas-Colell, Andreu and Sonnenschein, Hugo.
“General Possibility Theorems for Group Deci-
sions.” Review of Economic Studies, April 1972,
39(2), pp. 185–92.
Maskin, Eric S. “Social Welfare Functions on Re-
stricted Domain.” Mimeo, Harvard University,
1976a.
. “On Strategyproofness and Social Welfare
Functions When Preferences Are Restricted.”
Mimeo, Darwin College, and Harvard University,
1976b.
. “A Theorem on Utilitarianism.” Review of
Economic Studies, February 1978, 45(1), pp. 93–
96.
. “Decision-Making Under Ignorance with
Implications for Social Choice.” Theory and De-
cision, September 1979, 11(3), pp. 319 –37.
. “The Theory of Implementation in Nash
Equilibrium: A Survey,” in Leonid Hurwicz,
David Schmeidler, and Hugo Sonnenschein, eds.,
Social goals and social organization: Essays in
memory of Elisha Pazner. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985, pp. 173–204.
. “Majority Rule, Social Welfare Functions,
and Game Forms,” in Kaushik Basu, Prasanta K.
Pattanaik, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds., Choice,
373
welfare, and development: A festschrift in honour
of Amartya K. Sen. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1995, pp. 100 – 09.
Maskin, Eric and Sjöström, Tomas. ‘‘Implementa-
tion Theory.’’ Mimeo, Harvard University, 1999.
Matsumoto, Yasumi. “Non-binary Social Choice:
Revealed Preference Interpretation.” Economica,
May 1985, 52(26), pp. 185–94.
McKelvey, Richard D. “General Conditions for
Global Intransitivities in Formal Voting Models.”
Econometrica, September 1979, 47(5), pp. 1085–
112.
McLean, Ian. “The Borda and Condorcet Principles:
Three Medieval Applications.” Social Choice and
Welfare, 1990, 7(2), pp. 99 –108.
Mill, John Stuart. On liberty. London: Parker, 1859;
republished, London: Harmondsworth, 1974.
Mirrlees, James A. “The Economic Uses of Utilitari-
anism,” in Amartya K. Sen and Bernard Williams,
eds., Utilitarianism and beyond. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1982, pp. 63–84.
Monjardet, Bernard. “Duality in the Theory of So-
cial Choice,” in Jean-Jacques Laffont, ed., Aggre-
gation and revelation of preferences. Amsterdam:
North-Holland, 1979, pp. 131– 43.
. “On the Use of Ultrafilters in Social Choice
Theory,” in Prasanta K. Pattanaik and Maurice
Salles, eds., Social choice and welfare. Amster-
dam: North-Holland, 1983.
Morris, Morris D. Measuring the conditions of the
world’s poor. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979.
Moulin, Hervé. The strategy of social choice. Am-
sterdam: North-Holland, 1983.
. Cooperative microeconomics. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Moulin, Hervé and Thomson, William. “Axiomatic
Analyses of Resource Allocation Problems,” in Ken-
neth J. Arrow, Amartya K. Sen, and Kotaro Suzu-
mura, eds., Social choice re-examined, Vol. 1. New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997, pp. 101–20.
Mueller, Dennis C. Public Choice II. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989.
. “Constitutional and Liberal Rights.” Ana-
lyse & Kritik, September 1996, 18(1), pp. 96 –117.
Nehring, Klaus and Puppe, Clemens. “On the Mul-
tipreference Approach to Evaluating Opportuni-
ties.” Social Choice and Welfare, 1999, 16(1), pp.
41– 64.
Nicholson, Michael B. “Conditions for the ‘Voting
Paradox’ in Committee Decisions.” Metroeco-
nomica, January–August 1965, 17(1–2), pp. 29 –
44.
374 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, state and utopia. New
York: Basic Books, 1974.
Nussbaum, Martha. “Nature, Function, and Capa-
bility: Aristotle on Political Distribution.” Oxford
Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 1988, Supp., pp.
145– 84.
Nussbaum, Martha and Glover, Jonathan, eds.
Women, culture, and development: A study of human
capabilities. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Nussbaum, Martha and Sen, Amartya K., eds. The
quality of life. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1993.
Osmani, Siddiqur R. Economic inequality and
group welfare. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1982.
. “The Entitlement Approach to Famine: An
Assessment,” in Kaushik Basu, Prasanta K. Pat-
tanaik, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds., Choice, wel-
fare, and development: A festschrift in honour of
Amartya K. Sen. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995, pp. 253–94.
Parks, Robert P. “Further Results on Path Indepen-
dence, Quasitransitivity, and Social Choice.” Pub-
lic Choice, Summer 1976a, 26(26), pp. 75– 87.
. “An Impossibility Theorem for Fixed Pref-
erences: A Dictatorial Bergson-Samuelson Wel-
fare Function.” Review of Economic Studies,
October 1976b, 43(3), pp. 447–50.
Pattanaik, Prasanta K. Voting and collective
choice. London: Cambridge University Press,
1971.
. “On the Stability of Sincere Voting Situa-
tions.” Journal of Economic Theory, December
1973, 6(6), pp. 558 –74.
. Strategy and group choice. Amsterdam:
North-Holland, 1978.
. “The Liberal Paradox: Some Interpreta-
tions When Rights Are Represented as Game
Forms.” Analyse & Kritik, September 1996, 18(1),
pp. 38 –53.
. “On Modelling Individual Rights: Some
Conceptual Issues,” in Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya
K. Sen, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds., Social choice
re-examined, Vol. 2. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1997, pp. 100 –28.
Pattanaik, Prasanta K. and Salles, Maurice, eds.
Social choice and welfare. Amsterdam: North-
Holland, 1983.
Pattanaik, Prasanta K. and Sengupta, Manimay.
“Conditions for Transitive and Quasi-Transitive
Majority Decisions.” Economica, November
1974, 41(164), pp. 414 –23.
JUNE 1999
. “Restricted Preferences and Strategy-
Proofness of a Class of Group Decision Func-
tions.” Review of Economic Studies, October
1980, 47(5), pp. 965–73.
Pazner, Elisha A. and Schmeidler, David. “A Dif-
ficulty in the Concept of Fairness.” Review of
Economic Studies, July 1974, 41(3), pp. 441– 43.
Peleg, Bezalel. “Consistent Voting Systems.” Econo-
metrica, January 1978, 46(1), pp. 153– 62.
. Game theoretic analysis of voting in com-
mittees. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1984.
Phelps, Edmund S., ed. Economic justice. Har-
mondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1973.
Pigou, Arthur C. The economics of welfare. Lon-
don: Macmillan, 1920.
Plott, Charles R. “A Notion of Equilibrium and Its Pos-
sibility under Majority Rule.” American Economic Re-
view, September 1967, 57(4), pp. 787–806.
. “Path Independence, Rationality, and So-
cial Choice.” Econometrica, November 1973,
41(6), pp. 1075–91.
. “Axiomatic Social Choice Theory: An
Overview and Interpretation.” American Journal
of Political Science, August 1976, 20(3), pp. 511–
96.
Pollak, Robert A. “Welfare Comparisons and Situ-
ation Comparison.” Journal of Econometrics, Oc-
tober–November 1991, 50(1–2), pp. 31– 48.
Pollak, Robert and Wales, Terence J. “Welfare
Comparisons and Equivalence Scales.” American
Economic Review, May 1979 (Papers and Pro-
ceedings), 69(2), pp. 216 –21.
Rae, Douglas W. “Using District Magnitude to
Regulate Political Party Competition.” Journal
of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995, 9(1),
pp. 65–75.
Rangarajan, L. N., ed. The Arthasastra. New Delhi,
India: Penguin Books, 1987.
Ravallion, Martin. Markets and famines. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1987.
. Poverty comparisons. Chur, Switzerland:
Harwood, 1994.
. “Household Vulnerability to Aggregate
Shocks: Differing Fortunes of the Poor in Bang-
ladesh and Indonesia,” in Kaushik Basu, Prasanta
K. Pattanaik, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds., Choice,
welfare, and development: A festschrift in honour
of Amartya K. Sen. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1995, pp. 295–312.
Rawls, John. A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1971.
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
Razavi, Shahrashoub. ‘‘Excess Female Mortality:
An Indicator of Female Subordination? A Note
Drawing on Village-Level Evidence from South-
eastern Iran.’’ Notizie di Politeia, 1996, 12(43–
44), pp. 79 –95.
Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Interna-
tional Federation of. World disasters report
1994. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1994.
Riley, Jonathan. Liberal utilitarianism: Social
choice theory and J. S. Mill’s philosophy. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Robbins, Lionel. “Interpersonal Comparisons of
Utility: A Comment.” Economic Journal, Decem-
ber 1938, 48(192), pp. 635– 41.
Roberts, Kevin W. S. “Possibility Theorems with
Interpersonally Comparable Welfare Levels.” Re-
view of Economic Studies, January 1980a, 47(2),
pp. 409 –20.
. “Interpersonal Comparability and Social
Choice Theory.” Review of Economic Studies, Jan-
uary 1980b, 47(2), pp. 421–39.
. “Valued Opinions or Opiniated Values:
The Double Aggregation Problem,” in Kaushik
Basu, Prasanta K. Pattanaik, and Kotaro Suzu-
mura, eds., Choice, welfare, and development: A
festschrift in honour of Amartya K. Sen. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 141– 67.
Roemer, John. A general theory of exploitation and
class. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1982.
. Theories of distributive justice. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Rothschild, Michael and Stiglitz, Joseph E. ‘‘Some
Further Results on the Measurement of Inequality.’’
Journal of Economic Theory, April 1973, 6(2), pp.
188 –204.
Rowley, Charles K. Liberty and the state. Aldershot,
U.K.: Elgar, 1993.
Salles, Maurice. “A General Possibility Theorem for
Group Decision Rules with Pareto-Transitivity.”
Journal of Economic Theory, August 1975, 11(1),
pp. 110 –18.
Samuelson, Paul A. Foundations of economic anal-
ysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1947.
Satterthwaite, Mark A. “Strategy-Proofness and
Arrow’s Conditions: Existence and Correspon-
dence Theorems for Voting Procedures and Social
Welfare Functions.” Journal of Economic Theory,
April 1975, 10(2), pp. 187–217.
Schmeidler, David and Sonnenschein, Hugo F.
“Two Proofs of the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theo-
375
rem on the Possibility of a Strategy-Proof Social
Choice Function,” in H. W. Gottinger and W.
Leinfeller, eds., Decision theory and social ethics:
Issues in social choice. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978,
pp. 227–34.
Schofield, Norman J. “General Instability of Major-
ity Rule.” Review of Economic Studies, October
1983, 50(4), pp. 695–705.
, ed. Collective decision-making: Social
choice and political economy. Boston: Kluwer,
1996.
Schokkaert, Erik and Van Ootegem, Luc. “Sen’s
Concept of the Living Standard Applied to the
Belgian Unemployed.” Récherches Economiques
de Louvain, 1990, 56(3– 4), pp. 429 –50.
Schwartz, Thomas. “On the Possibility of Rational
Policy Evaluation.” Theory and Decision, October
1970, 1(1), pp. 89 –106.
. “Rationality and the Myth of the Maxi-
mum.” Noûs, May 1972, 6(2), pp. 97–117.
. The logic of collective choice. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986.
Scitovsky, Tibor. The joyless economy. Oxford: Ox-
ford University Press, 1976.
Seidl, Christian. “On Liberal Values.” Zeitschrift für Na-
tionalökonomie, May 1975, 35(3–4), pp. 257–92.
. “Poverty Measurement: A Survey,” in Di-
eter Bos, Manfred Rose, and Christian Seidl, eds.,
Welfare and efficiency in public economics. Ber-
lin: Springer-Verlag, 1988, pp. 71–147.
. “Foundations and Implications of Rights,”
in Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya K. Sen, and Kotaro
Suzumura, eds., Social choice re-examined, Vol.
2. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997, pp. 53–77.
Sen, Amartya K. “Preferences, Votes and the Tran-
sitivity of Majority Decisions.” Review of Eco-
nomic Studies, April 1964, 31(2), pp. 163– 65.
. “A Possibility Theorem on Majority Deci-
sions.” Econometrica, April 1966, 34(2), pp. 491–
09.
. “Quasi-Transitivity, Rational Choice and
Collective Decisions.” Review of Economic Stud-
ies, July 1969, 36(3), pp. 381–93.
. Collective choice and social welfare. San
Francisco, CA: Holden-Day, 1970a.
. “The Impossibility of a Paretian Liber-
al.” Journal of Political Economy, January–Feb-
ruary 1970b, 78(1), pp. 152–57; reprinted in Sen
(1982a).
. “Interpersonal Aggregation and Partial
Comparability.” Econometrica, May 1970c, 38(3),
pp. 393– 409; reprinted in Sen (1982a).
376 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
. On economic inequality. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1973a; Expanded Ed., 1997c.
. “On the Development of Basic Income
Indicators to Supplement the GNP Measure.”
United Nations Economic Bulletin for Asia and the
Far East, September–December 1973b, 24(2–3),
pp. 1–11.
. “Behaviour and the Concept of Prefer-
ence.” Economica, 1973c, 40(159), pp. 241–59;
reprinted in Sen (1982a).
. “Choice, Orderings, and Morality,” in S.
Korner, ed., Practical reason. Oxford: Blackwell,
1974; reprinted in Sen (1982a).
. “Real National Income.” Review of Eco-
nomic Studies, February 1976a, 43(1), pp. 19 –39;
reprinted in Sen (1982a).
. “Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Mea-
surement.” Econometrica, March 1976b, 44(2),
pp. 219 –23; reprinted in Sen (1982a).
. “Liberty, Unanimity and Rights.” Eco-
nomica, August 1976c, 43(171), pp. 217– 45; re-
printed in Sen (1982a).
. “Social Choice Theory: A Re-examina-
tion.” Econometrica, January 1977a, 45(1), pp.
53– 89; reprinted in Sen (1982a).
. “Starvation and Exchange Entitlements: A
General Approach and Its Application to the Great
Bengal Famine.” Cambridge Journal of Econom-
ics, March 1977b, 1(1), pp. 33–59.
. “On Weights and Measures: Informational
Constraints in Social Welfare Analysis.” Econo-
metrica, October 1977c, 45(7), pp. 1539 –72; re-
printed in Sen (1982a).
. “Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behav-
ioral Foundations of Economic Theory.” Philoso-
phy and Public Affairs, Summer 1977d, 6(4), pp.
317– 44; reprinted in Sen (1982a).
. “The Welfare Basis of Real Income Com-
parisons: A Survey.” Journal of Economic Liter-
ature, March 1979a, 17(1), pp. 1– 45; reprinted in
Sen (1984).
. “Personal Utilities and Public Judgements:
Or What’s Wrong with Welfare Economics.” Eco-
nomic Journal, September 1979b, 89(355), pp.
537–58; reprinted in Sen (1982a).
. “Equality of What?” in S. McMurrin, ed.,
Tanner lectures on human values, Vol. 1. Salt
Lake City, UT: University of Utah, 1980, pp.
195–220; reprinted in Sen (1982a).
. Poverty and famines: An essay on entitle-
ment and deprivation. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1981.
JUNE 1999
. Choice, welfare and measurement. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1982a; Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1997.
. “Rights and Agency.” Philosophy and
Public Affairs, Spring 1982b, 11(2), pp. 113–32.
. “Liberty and Social Choice.” Journal of
Philosophy, January 1983a, 80(1), pp. 5–28.
. “Poor, Relatively Speaking.” Oxford Eco-
nomic Papers, July 1983b, 35(2), pp. 153– 69.
. Resources, values and development. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.
. Commodities and capabilities. Amster-
dam: North-Holland, 1985a.
. “Well-being, Agency and Freedom: The
Dewey Lectures 1984.” Journal of Philosophy,
April 1985b, 82(4), pp. 169 –221.
. “Social Choice Theory,” in Kenneth J.
Arrow and Michael Intriligator, eds., Handbook of
mathematical economics, Vol. III. Amsterdam:
North-Holland, 1986a, pp. 1073–181.
. “Information and Invariance in Normative
Choice,” in Walter P. Heller, Ross M. Starr, and
David A. Starrett, eds., Essays in honor of Kenneth
J. Arrow, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1986b, pp. 29 –55.
. “Gender and Cooperative Conflict,” in
Irene Tinker, ed., Persistent inequalities. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 123– 49.
. Inequality reexamined. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1992a.
. “Minimal Liberty.” Economica, May
1992b, 59(234), pp. 139 – 60.
. “Missing Women.” British Medical Jour-
nal, March 1992c, 304(6827), pp. 587– 88.
. “Internal Consistency of Choice.” Economet-
rica, May 1993a, 61(3), pp. 495–521.
. “Capability and Well-being,” in Martha
Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, eds., The quality of
life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993b, pp.
30 –53.
. “Positional Objectivity.” Philosophy and
Public Affairs, Spring 1993c, 22(2), pp. 83–135.
. ‘‘Well-Being, Capability and Public
Policy,’’ Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di
Economia, July–September 1994, 53(7–9), pp.
333– 47.
. “Rationality and Social Choice.” American
Economic Review, March 1995a, 85(1), pp. 1–24.
. “Environmental Evaluation and Social
Choice: Contingent Valuation and the Market
Analogy.” Japanese Economic Review, March
1995b, 46(1), pp. 23–37.
VOL. 89 NO. 3 SEN: THE POSSIBILITY OF SOCIAL CHOICE
. “Rights: Formulation and Consequences.”
Analyse & Kritik, September 1996a, 18, pp. 53–
70.
. ‘‘Freedom, Capabilities and Public Action:
A Response.’’ Notizie di Politeia, 1996b, 12(43–
44), pp. 105–25.
. “Maximization and the Act of Choice.”
Econometrica, July 1997a, 65(4), pp. 745– 80.
. “Individual Preference as the Basis of So-
cial Choice,” in Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya K.
Sen, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds., Social choice
re-examined, Vol. 2. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1997b.
. On economic inequality [Expanded Ed.,
with a substantial annexe jointly with James Fos-
ter]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997c.
. Development as freedom [mimeo]; 1999a
(forthcoming).
. Freedom, rationality and social choice:
Arrow lectures and other essays [mimeo]; 1999b
(forthcoming).
Sen, Amartya K. and Pattanaik, Prasanta K.
“Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Rational
Choice under Majority Decision.” Journal of Eco-
nomic Theory, August 1969, 1(2), pp. 178 –202.
Sengupta, Manimay. “Monotonicity, Independence of
Irrelevant Alternatives and Strategy-Proofness of So-
cial Decision Functions.” Review of Economic Stud-
ies, January 1980a, 47(2), pp. 393– 407.
. “The Knowledge Assumption in the The-
ory of Strategic Voting.” Econometrica, July
1980b, 48(5), pp. 1301– 04.
Shorrocks, Anthony F. “Inequality Decomposition
by Population Subgroups.” Econometrica, No-
vember 1984, 52(6), pp. 1369 – 85.
. “Revisiting the Sen Poverty Index.” Econo-
metrica, September 1995, 63(5), pp. 1225–30.
Slesnick, Daniel T. “Empirical Approaches to the
Measurement of Welfare.” Journal of Economic
Literature, December 1998, 36(4), pp. 2108 – 65.
Smith, Adam. An inquiry into the wealth of nations.
London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776; repub-
lished, London: Home University, 1910.
Solow, Robert M. “Mass Unemployment as a Social
Problem,” in Kaushik Basu, Prasanta K. Pattanaik,
and Kotaro Suzumura, eds., Choice, welfare, and
development: A festschrift in honour of Amartya
K. Sen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995,
pp. 313–21.
Starrett, David. Foundations of public economics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Steiner, Hillel. “Putting Rights in Their Place: An
377
Appraisal of A. Sen’s Work on Rights.” Récher-
ches Economiques de Louvain, 1990, 56(3– 4), pp.
391– 408.
Stewart, Frances. Planning to meet basic needs.
London: Macmillan, 1985.
Strasnick, Stephen. “Social Choice and the Deriva-
tion of Rawls’s Difference Principle.” Journal of
Philosophy, February 1976, 73(4), pp. 85–99.
Streeten, Paul. “Basic Needs: Some Unsettled Ques-
tions.” World Development, September 1984,
12(9), pp. 973–78.
Streeten, Paul (with Burki, S. J.; Haq, Mahbub
ul; Hicks, Norman and Stewart, Frances).
First things first: Meeting basic needs in devel-
oping countries. London: Oxford University
Press, 1981.
Sugden, Robert. The political economy of public
choice. New York: Wiley, 1981.
. “Liberty, Preference, and Choice.” Econom-
ics and Philosophy, October 1985, 1(2), pp. 213–29.
. “Welfare, Resources, and Capabilities: A
Review of Inequality Reexamined by Amartya
Sen.” Journal of Economic Literature, December
1993, 31(4), pp. 1947– 62.
Suppes, Patrick. “Some Formal Models of Grading
Principles.” Synthese, December 1966, 16(3/4),
pp. 284 –306.
Suzumura, Kotaro. “Rational Choice and Revealed
Preference.” Review of Economic Studies, Febru-
ary 1976a, 43(1), pp. 149 –58.
. “Remarks on the Theory of Collective
Choice.” Economica, November 1976b, 43(172),
pp. 381–90.
. Rational choice, collective decisions, and
social welfare. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1983.
. Competition, commitment, and welfare.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
. “Welfare, Rights, and Social Choice Pro-
cedure: A Perspective.” Analyse & Kritik, Septem-
ber 1996, 18(1), pp. 20 –37.
. “Interpersonal Comparisons of the Ex-
tended Sympathy Type and the Possibility of So-
cial Choice,” in Kenneth J. Arrow, Amartya K.
Sen, and Kotaro Suzumura, eds., Social choice
re-examined, Vol. 2. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1997, pp. 202–29.
. “Consequences, Opportunities, and Proce-
dures.” Social Choice and Welfare, 1999, 16(1),
pp. 17– 40.
Svedberg, Peter. Poverty and undernutrition: The-
ory and measurement. Mimeo (study for WIDER);
378 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
1999 (forthcoming).
Svensson, Lars-Gunnar. “Social Justice and Fair
Distributions.” Lund Economic Studies, 1977, 15.
. “Equity Among Generations.” Economet-
rica, July 1980, 48(5), pp. 1251–56.
Tideman, Nicolaus. “The Single Transferable
Vote.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter
1995, 9(1), pp. 27–38.
Tullock, Gordon. “The General Irrelevance of the
General Possibility Theorem.” Quarterly Journal
of Economics, May 1967, 81(2), pp. 256 –70.
United Nations Development Programme. (UNDP).
Human development report 1990. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1990.
van Hees, Martin. “Individual Rights and Legal
Validity.” Analyse & Kritik, September 1996,
18(1), pp. 81–95.
Van Parijs, Philippe. Real freedom for all: What (if
anything) can justify capitalism? Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
Varian, Hal. “Equity, Envy, and Efficiency,” Jour-
nal of Economic Theory, September 1974, 9(1),
pp. 63–91.
. “Distributive Justice, Welfare Economics
and a Theory of Justice.” Philosophy and Public
Affairs, Spring 1975, 4(3), pp. 223– 47.
Vaughan, Megan. The story of an African famine:
Gender and famine in twentieth century Malawi.
JUNE 1999
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Vickrey, William S. “Utility, Strategy, and Social
Decision Rules.” Quarterly Journal of Economics,
November 1960, 74, pp. 507–35.
Ward, Benjamin. “Majority Voting and Alternative
Forms of Public Enterprise,” in Julius Margolis,
ed., The public economy of urban communities.
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1965, pp. 112–26.
Weber, Robert J. “Approval Voting.” Journal of
Economic Perspectives, Winter 1995, 9 (1), pp.
39 – 49.
Wilson, Robert. “Social Choice Without the Pareto
Principle.” Journal of Economic Theory, Decem-
ber 1972, 5(3), pp. 478 – 86.
. “On the Theory of Aggregation.” Journal
of Economic Theory, February 1975, 10(1), pp.
89 –99.
Wriglesworth, John L. Libertarian conflicts in so-
cial choice. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985.
Young, H. Peyton. “Condorcet’s Theory of Voting.”
American Political Science Review, December
1988, 82(4), pp. 1231– 44.
. “Optimal Voting Rules.” Journal of Eco-
nomic Perspectives, Winter 1995, 9(1), pp. 51–64.
, ed. Fair allocation. Providence, RI: Amer-
ican Mathematical Society, 1985.